 1. It was four o'clock in the morning when the ceremony was over and the carriages began to arrive. There had been a crowd following all the way, owing to the exuberance of Maria Parchinskas. The occasion rested heavily upon Maria's broad shoulders. It was her task to see that all things went in due form, and after the best home traditions and flying wildly hither and thither, bowling everyone out of the way, and scolding and exhorting all day with her tremendous voice, Maria was too eager to see that others conformed to the properties to consider them herself. She had left the church last of all, and desiring to arrive first at the hall had issued orders to the coachmen to drive faster. When that personage had developed a will of his own in the matter, Maria had slung up the window of the carriage, and leaning out proceeded to tell him her opinion of him. First, in Lithuania, which he did not understand, and then in Polish, which he did. Having the advantage of her in altitude, the driver had stood his ground and even ventured to attempt to speak, and the result had been a furious altercation, which continuing all the way down Ashland Avenue had added a new swarm of urchins to the courtage at each side street for half a mile. This was unfortunate, for already there was a throng before the door. The music had started up, and half a block away you could hear the dull room, room of a cello, with the squeaking of two fiddles which vied with each other in intricate and altitudinous gymnastics. Seeing the throng, Maria abandoned precipitately the debate concerning the ancestors of her coachmen, and springing from the moving carriage, plunged in and proceeded to clear a way to the hall. Once within, she turned and began to push the other way, roaring, meantime, ick, ick, mustarick, dores, in tones which made the orchestral uproar sound like fairy music. Ze, kraichones, tazilims minimams, darsas, venas, schnapsis, wines and liquors, union headquarters. That was the way the signs ran. The reader, who perhaps has never held much converse in the language of far-off Lithuania, will be glad of the explanation that the place was the rear room of a saloon in that part of Chicago known as the back of the yards. This information is definite and suited to the matter of fact, but how pitifully inadequate it would have seemed to one who understood that it was the supreme hour of ecstasy in the life of one of God's gentlest creatures, the scene of the wedding feast, and the joy-transfiguration of little Ona Lukeshite. She stood in the doorway, shepherded by cousin Maria, breathless from pushing through the crowd and in her happiness painful to look upon. There was a light of wonder in her eyes and her lids trembled, and her otherwise wan little face was flushed. She wore a muslin dress conspicuously white and a stiff little veil coming to her shoulders. There were five pink paper roses twisted in the veil and eleven bright green roselies. There were new white cotton gloves upon her hands, and as she stood staring about her, she twisted them together feverishly. It was almost too much for her. You could see the pain of too great emotion in her face and all the tremor of her form. She was so young, not quite sixteen and small for her age, a mere child, and she had just been married and married to Yorgis, of all men, to Yorgis Rudkis, he with the white flower in the buttonhole of his new black suit, he with the mighty shoulders and the giant hands. Ona was blue-eyed and fair, while Yorgis had great black eyes with beedling brows and thick black hair that curled in waves about his ears. In short, they were one of those incongruous and impossible married couples with which mother nature so often wills to confound all prophets before and after. Yorgis could take up a two hundred and fifty pound quarter of beef and carry it into a car without a stagger or even a thought. And now he stood in a far corner, frightened as a hunted animal, and obliged to moisten his lips with his tongue each time before he could answer the congratulations of his friends. Gradually there was effected a separation between the spectators and the guests, a separation at least sufficiently complete for working purposes. There was no time during the festivities which ensued when there were not groups of onlookers in the doorways and the corners, and if any one of these onlookers came sufficiently close, or looked sufficiently hungry, a chair was offered him, and he was invited to the feast. It is one of the laws of the Veselia that no one goes hungry. And while a rule made in the forests of Lithuania is hard to apply in the stockyards district of Chicago, with its quarter of a million inhabitants, still they did their best, and the children who ran in from the street and even the dogs went out again happier. A charming informality was one of those characteristics of this celebration. The men wore their hats or, if they wished, they took them off, and their coats with them. They ate when they were hungry, and where they pleased, and moved as often as they pleased. There were to be speeches and singing, but no one had to listen who did not care to. If he wished, meantime, to speak or sing himself, he was perfectly free. The resulting medley of sound distracted no one, save possibly alone the babies, of which there were present a number equal to the total possessed by all the guests . There was no other place for the babies to be, and so part of the preparations for the evening consisted of a collection of cribs and carriages in one corner. In these the babies slept, three or four together, or wakened together as the case might be. Those who were still older or could reach the tables marched about munching contentedly at meat bones and bologna sausages. The room is about thirty feet square, with whitewashed walls there save for a calendar, a picture of a racehorse, and a family tree in a gilded frame. To the right there is a door from the saloon with a few loafers in the doorway, and in the corner beyond a bar with a presiding genius clad in soiled white with waxed black mustaches and a carefully oiled curl plastered against one side of his forehead. In the opposite corner are two tables filling a third of the room and laden with dishes and cold the hyungs, which a few of the hungrier guests are already munching. At the head where sits the bride is a snow white cake with an eiffel tower of constructed decoration, with sugar roses and two angels upon it, and a generous sprinkling of pink and green and yellow candies. Beyond opens a door into the kitchen, where there is a glimpse to be had of a range with much steam ascending from it, and many women, old and young, rushing hither and thither. In the corner to the left are the three musicians, upon a little platform, toiling heroically to make some impression upon the hubbub. Also the babies similarly occupied, and an open window whence the populace imbibes the sights and sounds and odors. Suddenly some of the steam begins to advance, entering through it you discern Aunt Elizabeth, Ona's stepmother, Teda Esbita, as they call her, bearing aloft a great platter of stewed duck. Behind her is Katrina, making her way cautiously, staggering beneath a similar burden, and half a minute later, there appears old grandmother Myowskianian, with a big yellow bowl of smoking potatoes nearly as big as herself. So bit by bit the feast takes form. There is a ham and a dish of sauerkraut, boiled rice, macaroni, bologna sausages, great piles of henny buns, bowls of milk, and foaming pictures of beer. There is also, not six feet from your back, the bar, where you may order all you please and do not have to pay for it. Aish, great child! screams Maria Berchinskas, and falls to work herself, for there is more upon the stove inside that will be spoiled if it be not eaten. So with laughter and shouts, and endless maddenage and merriment, the guests take their places. The young men, who for the most part have been huddled near the door, summon their resolution in advance, and the shrinking Yurgis is poked and scolded by the old folks until he consents to seat himself at the right hand of the bride. The two bridesmaids, who insignia of office or paper-wrease, come next, and after them the rest of the guests, old and young, boys and girls. The spirit of the occasion takes hold of the stately bartender, who condescends to a plate of stewed duck. Even the fat policeman, whose duty it will be later in the evening to break up the fights, draws up a chair to the foot of the table, and the children shout, and the babies yell, and everyone laughs and sings and chatters, while above all the deafening clamour, cousin Maria shouts orders to the musicians. The musicians, how shall one begin to describe them? All this time they have been there, playing in a mad frenzy, all of this scene must be read or said or sung to music. It is the music which makes it what it is. It is the music which changes the place, from the rear room of a saloon in the back of the yards to a ferry place. A wonderland, a little corner of the high mansions of the sky. The little person who leads this trio is an inspired man. His fiddle is out of tune, and there is no rosin on his bow, but still he is an inspired man. The hands of the muses have been laid upon him. He plays like one possessed by a demon, by a whole horde of demons. You can feel them in the air round about him, capering frenetically with their invisible feet they set the pace, and the hair of the leader of the orchestra rises on in, and his eyeballs start from their sockets as he toils to keep up with them. Tomocius Cushlaica is his name, and he has taught himself to play the violin by practicing all night, after working all day on the killing beds. He is in his shirt sleeves with a vest figured with faded gold horseshoes, and a pink striped shirt suggested of peppermint candy. A pair of military trousers, light blue with a yellow stripe, serve to give that suggestion of authority proper to the leader of a band. He is only about five feet high, but even so, these trousers are about eight inches short of the ground. You wonder where he could have gotten them, or rather you wonder if the excitement of being in his presence left you time to think of such things. For he is an inspired man. Every inch of him is inspired. You might almost say inspired separately. He stamps with his feet. He tosses his head. He sways and swings to and fro. He has a wizened up little face, irresistibly comical, and when he executes a turn or a flourish, his brows knit and his lips work, and his eyelids wink, the very ends of his neck tie bristle out, and every now and then he turns upon his companions nodding, signaling, beckoning frantically with every inch of him appealing, imploring in behalf of the muses and their call. For they are hardly worthy of Timotius, the other two members of the orchestra. The second violin is a slobac, a tall gaunt man with black rims, spectacles, and the mute and patient look of an over-driven mule. He responds to the whip, but feebly, and then always falls back into his old rut. The third man is very fat, with a round, red, sentimental nose, and he plays with his eyes turned up to the sky in a look of infinite yearning. He is playing a bass part upon his cello, and so the excitement is nothing to him. No matter what happens in the treble, it is his task to saw out one long, drawn, and lugubrious note after another, from four o'clock in the afternoon until nearly the same hour next morning for his third of the total income of one dollar per hour. Before the feast has been five minutes underway Tomosius Cushlaiga has risen in his excitement a minute or two more and you see that he is beginning to edge over toward the tables. His nostrils are dilated and his breath comes fast. His demons are driving him. He nods and shakes his head at his companions, jerking at them with his violin, until at last the long form of the second violinist also rises up. In the end, all three of them begin advancing step by step upon the banqueters. Valentini Cia, the cellist, bumping along with his instrument between notes. Finally all three are gathered at the foot of the tables and there Tomosius mounts upon a stool. Now he is in his glory, dominating the scene. Some of the people are eating, some are laughing and talking, but you will make a great mistake if you think there is one of them who does not hear him. His notes are never true and his fiddle buzzes on the low ones and squeaks and scratches on the high. But these things they heed no more than they heed the dirt and noise and squalor about them. It is out of this material that they have to build their lives with it that they have to utter their souls. And this is their utterance, merry and boisterous or mournful and wailing or passionate and rebellious this music is their music. Music of home. It stretches out its arms to them and they have only to give themselves up. Chicago and its saloons and its slums fade away. There are green meadows and sunlit rivers, mighty forests and snow-clad hills. They behold home landscapes and childhood scenes returning. Old loves and friendships begin to awaken. Old joys and griefs to laugh and weep. Some fall back and close their eyes. Some beat upon the table. Now and then one leaps up with a cry and calls for this song or that. And then the fire leaps brighter into mostious eyes and he flings up his fiddle and shouts to his companions and away they go in mad career. The company takes up the choruses and men and women cry out like all possessed. Some leap to their feet and stamp upon the floor lifting their glasses and pledging each other. Before long it occurs to someone to demand an old wedding song which celebrates the beauty of the bride and the joys of love. In the excitement of this masterpiece Tamoshia's kushlaika begins to edge in between the tables making his way toward the head where sits the bride. There is not a foot of space between the chairs of the guest and Tamoshia's is so short that he pokes them with his bow whenever he reaches over for the low notes but still he presses in and insists relentlessly that his companions must follow. During their progress needless to say the sounds of the cello are pretty well extinguished but at last the three are at the head and Tamoshia's takes his station at the right hand of the bride and begins to pour out his soul in melting strains. Little Ona is too excited to eat. Once in a while she tastes a little something when cousin Maria pinches her elbow and reminds her but for the most part she sits gazing with the same fearful eyes of wonder. Teta Elsbeta is all in a flutter like a hummingbird. Her sisters too keep running up behind her whispering breathless but Ona seems scarcely to hear them. The music keeps calling and the far off look comes back and she sits with her hands pressed together over her heart. Then the tears begin to come into her eyes and as she is ashamed to wipe them away and ashamed to let them run down her cheeks she turns and shakes her head a little and then flushes red when she sees that Yurgis is watching her. When in the end Tamoshia's Kushlaika has reached her side and is waving his magic wand above her Ona's cheeks are scarlet and she looks as if she would have to get up and run away. In this crisis however she is saved by Maria Verchinskas whom the muses suddenly visit. Maria is fond of a song a song of lovers' parting. She wishes to hear it and as the musicians do not know it she has risen and is proceeding to teach them. Maria is short but powerful and built. She worked in a canning factory and all day long she handles cans of beef that weigh fourteen pounds. She has a broad slavic face with prominent red cheeks. When she opens her mouth it is tragical but you cannot help thinking of a horse. She wears a blue flannel shirt waist which is now rolled up to sleeves disclosing her brawny arms. She has a carving fork in her hand with which she pounds on the table to mark the time. As she roars her song in the voice of which it is enough to say that at least no portion of the room vacant the three musicians follow her laboriously and note by note but averaging one note behind. Thus they toil through stanza after stanza of a lovesick swan's lamentation. Sudyev kevet heli tu braum gaiusis Sudyev yeleime man viennam Matal pechaykri kep vok chausis trokver an sveto reik venam When the song is over it is time for the speech and old Dede Antonas rises to his feet. Grandfather Anthony Yurga's father is not more than sixty years of age but you would think that he was eighty. He has been only six months in America and the change has not done him good. In his manhood he worked in a cotton mill but then a coughing fell upon him and he had to leave. Out in the country the trouble disappeared but he had been working in the pickle rooms at Durham's and the breathing of the cold, damp air all day has brought it back. Now as he rises he is seized with a coughing fit and holds himself by his chair and turns away his wan and battered face until it passes. Generally it is the custom for the speech at a vizalia to be taken out of one of the books and learned by heart but in his youthful days Dede Antonas used to be a scholar and really makes up all the love letters of his friends. Now it is understood that he has composed an original speech of congratulations and benediction and this is one of the events of the day. Even the boys who are robbing about the room draw near and listen and some of the women sob and wipe their aprons in their eyes. It is very solemn for Antonas, Rukdis has become possessed of the idea that he has much longer to stay with his children. His speech leaves them all so terrible that one of the guests, Yokubas Cedvilas who keeps a delicate tessin store on Halstead Street and is that and hearty is moved to rise and say that things may not be as bad as that and then to go on and make a little speech of his own in which he showers congratulations and prophecies of happiness upon the bride and groom, proceeding to particulars which greatly delight the young men but which cause Ona to blush more furiously than ever. Rukubas possesses what his wife complacently describes as poetishkan ve dintu efe a poetical imagination. Now a good many of the guests have finished since there is no pretense of ceremony and it begins to break up. Some of the men gather about the bar some wonder about lapping and singing here and there there will be a little group chanting merrily and in sublime indifference to the others and to the orchestra as well. Everybody is more or less restless one would guess that something is on their minds and so it proves the last tardy diners are scarcely finished before the tables and the debris are shoved into the corner and the chairs and the babies piled out of the way and the real celebration of the evening begins. Then Tamosias Kushlaika after replenishing himself with a pot of beer returns to his platform and standing up reviews the scene. He taps authoritatively upon the side of his violin then tucks it carefully under his chin then waves his bow in an elaborate flourish and finally smites the sounding strings and closes his eyes and floats away in spirit upon the wings of a dreamy waltz his companion follows but with his eyes open watching where he treads so to speak and finally Valentin Nachovich after waiting for a little and beating with his foot to get the time casts up his eyes to the ceiling and begins to sob room, room, room the company pairs off quickly and the whole room is soon in motion apparently nobody knows how to waltz but that is nothing of any consequence there is music and they dance each as he pleases just as before they sang most of them prefer the two-step especially the young with whom it is the fashion the older people have dances from home strange and complicated steps which they execute with grave solemnity some do not dance anything at all but simply hold each other's hands and allow the undisciplined joy of motion to express itself with their feet among these are Gokubis Cedvilis and his wife Lucia who together keep the delicatessen store and consume nearly as much as they sell they are too fat to dance but they stand in the middle of the floor holding each other fast in their arms rocking slowly from side to side and grinning syrapically a picture of toothless and perspiring ecstasy of these older people many wear clothing reminiscent in some detail of home an embroidered waistcoat or stomacher or a gaily colored handkerchief or a coat with large cuffs and fancy buttons all these things are carefully avoided by the young most of whom have learned to speak English and to affect the latest style of clothing the girls wear ready-made dresses or shortwaists and some of them look quite pretty some of the young men you would take to be Americans of the type of clerks but for the fact that they wear their hats in the room each of these younger couples affects a style of its own in dancing some hold each other tightly some at a cautious distance some hold their hands out stiffly some drop loosely at their sides some dance springingly some glide softly some move with great dignity there are boisterous couples who tear wildly about the room knocking everyone out of their way there are nervous couples whom these frighten and who cry NUSKROK! KAZRA! at them as they pass each couple is paired to the evening you will never see them change about there is Elena Yesetite for instance who has danced on ending hours with Yuzas Raschus to whom she is engaged Elena is the beauty of the evening and she would be really beautiful if she were not so proud she wears a white shirt waist which represents perhaps half a week's labor painting cans she holds her skirt with her hand as she dances with stately precision after the manner of the grand dom Yuzas is driving one of Durham's wagons and is making big wages he affects a tough aspect wearing his hat on one side and keeping a cigarette in his mouth all the evening then there is Yadviga Marcinpus who is also beautiful but humble Yadviga likewise paint cans but then she has an invalid mother and three little sisters to support by it and so she does not spend her wages for shirt waist Yadviga is small and delicate with jet black eyes and hair the latter twisted into a little knot and tied on the top of her head she wears an old white dress which she has made herself and worn to parties for the past five years it is high waisted almost under her arms and not very becoming but that does not trouble Yadviga who is dancing with her Mikalos she is small while he is big and powerful she nestles in his arms as if she would hide herself from view and leans her head upon his shoulder he in turn has clasped her arms tightly around her as if he would carry her away and so she dances and will dance the entire evening and would dance forever in ecstasy of bliss you would smile perhaps to see them but you would not smile if you knew all the story this is the fifth year now that Yadviga has been engaged to Mikalos and her heart is sick they would have been married in the beginning on the Mikalos as a father who is drunk all day and he is the only other man in a large family even so they might have managed it for Mikalos is a skilled man but for cruel accidents which have almost taken the heart out of them he is a beef boner and that is a dangerous trade especially when you are on piecework and trying to earn a bride your hands are slippery and your knife is slippery and you are toiling like mad when somebody happens to speak to you or you strike a bone then your hand slips up on the blade and there is a fearful gash and that would not be so bad only for the deadly contagion the cut may heal but you can never tell twice now within the last three years Mikalos has been lying at home with blood poisoning once for three months and once for nearly seven the last time too he lost his job and that meant six weeks more of standing at the doors of the packing houses at six o'clock on bitter winter mornings with a foot of snow on the ground and more in the air there are learned people who can tell you out of the statistics that beef boners make forty cents an hour but perhaps these people have never looked into a beef boner's hands when Timotius and his companions stop for a rest as per force they must now and then the dancers halt where they are and wait patiently they never seem to tire and there is no place for them to sit down if they did it is only for a minute anyway and for the leader starts up again in spite of all the protests of the other two this time it is another sort of dance a Lithuanian dance those who prefer to go on with the two-step but the majority go through an intricate series of motions resembling more fancy skating than a dance the climax of it is a furious pastismo at which the couples seize hands and begin a mad whirling this is quite irresistible and everyone in the room joins in until the place becomes a maze of flying skirts and bodies quite dazzling to look upon but the sight of sights at this moment is Timotius Kushlaipa the old fiddle squeaks and shrieks in protest but Timotius has no mercy the sweat starts out in his forehead and he bends over like a cyclist on the last lap of a race his body shakes and throbs like a runaway steam engine and the ear cannot follow the flying showers of notes there is a pale blue mist where you look to see his bowing arm with a wonderful rush he comes to the end of the tune and flings up his hands and staggers back exhausted and with a final shout of delight the dancers fly apart really here and there bringing up against the walls of the room after this there is beer for everyone the musicians included and the revelers take a long breath and prepare for the great event of the evening which is the achavi mus the achavi mus is a ceremony which once begun will continue for three or four hours and it involves one uninterrupted dance the guests form a great ring and when the music starts up begin to move around in a circle in the center stands the bride and one by one the men step into the enclosure and dance with her each dances for several minutes as long as he pleases it is a very merry proceeding with laughter and singing and when the guest is finished he finds himself face to face with theta as vitae into it he drops a sum of money a dollar or perhaps five dollars according to his power and his estimate of the value of the privilege the guests are expected to pay for this entertainment if they be proper guests they will see that there is a neat sum left over for the bride and bridegroom to start life upon most fearful they are to contemplate the expenses of this entertainment they will certainly be over two hundred dollars and maybe three hundred and three hundred dollars is more than the year's income of many a person in this room there are able-bodied men here who work from early morning until late at night in ice cold cellars with a quarter inch of water on the floor men who for six or seven months in the year never see the sunlight from Sunday afternoon till the next Sunday morning and who cannot earn three hundred dollars in a year there are little children here scarce in their teens who can hardly see the top of the work benches whose parents have lied to get them their places and who do not make the half of three hundred dollars a year and perhaps not even the third of it and then to spend such a sum all in a single day of your life at a wedding feast for obviously it is the same thing whether you spend it at once for your own wedding or in a long time at the weddings of all your friends it is very imprudent it is tragic but ah it is so beautiful bit by bit these poor people have given up everything else but to this they cling with all the power of their souls they cannot give up the vesalia to do that would mean not merely to be defeated but to acknowledge defeat and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going the vesalia has come down to them from a far off time and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the cave and gaze upon shadows provided only that once in his lifetime he could break his chains and feel his wings and behold his sun provided that once in his lifetime he might testify to the fact that life with all its cares and its terrors is no such great thing after all but merely a bubble upon the surface of a river a thing that one may toss and play with as a juggler tosses his golden balls a thing that one may quash like a goblet of rare red wine thus having known himself for the master of things a man could go back to his toil and live upon the memory all his days endlessly the dancers swung round and round when they were dizzy they swung the other way hour after hour this had continued the darkness had fallen and the room was dim from the light of two smoky oil lamps the musicians had spent all fine frenzy by now and played only one tune wearily, plottingly there were twenty bars or so of it and when they came to the end they began again once every ten minutes or so they would fail to begin again but instead would sink back exhausted a circumstance which invariably brought on a painful and terrifying scene that made the fat policeman stir uneasily in his sleeping place behind the door it was all Maria Parchinskas Maria was one of those hungry souls who clung with desperation to the skirts of the retreating muse all day long she had been in a state of wonderful exaltation and now it was leading and she would not let it go her soul cried out in the words of Faust stay whether it was by beer or by shouting or by music or by motion she meant that it should not go and she would go back to the chase of it and no sooner be fairly started than her chariot would be thrown off the track so to speak by the stupidity of those price accursed musicians each time Maria would emit a howl and fly at them shaking her fists in their faces stamping upon the floor purple and incoherent with rage in vain the frightened Fomocius would attempt to speak to plead the limitations of the flesh in vain with the puffing and breathless ponus yokubus insist in vain with Teda Eves Beta in floor Shalin Maria would scream Paluk ishtilio what are you paid for children of hell in sheer terror the orchestra would strike up again and Maria would return to her place and take up her task she bore all the burden of the festivities now Ona was kept up by her excitement but all of the women and most of the men were tired the soul of Maria was alone uncockered she drove on the dancers what had once been the ring had now the shape of a pair with Maria at the stem pulling one way and pushing the other shouting stamping singing a very volcano of energy now and then some coming in were out would leave the door open and the night air was chill Maria as she passed would stretch out her foot and kick the doorknob and slam would go the door once this procedure was the cause of a calamity of which Sebastianis Cedvillas was the hapless victim little Sebastianis age three had been wondering about oblivious to all things holding turned up over his mouth a bottle of liquid known as pop pink colored ice cold and delicious passing through the doorway the door smote him full and the shriek which followed brought the dancing to a halt Maria who threatened horrid murder a hundred times a day a week over the injury of a fly seized little Sebastianis in her arms and bid fair to smother him with kisses there was a long rest for the orchestra and plenty of refreshments while Maria was making her peace with her victim seating him upon the bar and standing beside him and holding to his lips a foaming schooner of beer in the meantime there was going on in another corner of the room an anxious conference between Teta as beta and Dede Antonas and a few of the more intimate friends of the family a trouble was come upon them the Vesalia is a compact a compact not expressed but therefore only the more binding upon all everyone's share was different and yet everyone knew perfectly well what his share was and strove to give a little more now however since they had come to the new country all this was changing it seemed as if there must be some subtle poison in the air that one breathed here it was affecting all the young men at once they would come in crowds and fill themselves with a fine dinner and then sneak off one would throw another's hat out of the window and both would go out and get it and neither could be seen again or now and then half a dozen of them would get together and march out openly staring at you and making fun of you to your face still others, worse yet would crowd about the bar and at the expense of the host drink themselves sodden paying not the least attention to anyone and leaving it to be thought that either ready or meant to later on all these things were going on now and the family was helpless with dismay so long they had toiled and such an outlay they had made Ona stood by her eyes wide with terror those frightful bills how they had haunted her each item gnawing at her soul all day and spoiling her rest at night how often she had named them over one by one and figured on them as she went to work fifteen dollars for the hall twenty two dollars and a quarter for the ducks twelve dollars for the musicians five dollars at the church and a blessing of the virgin besides and so on without an end worst of all was the frightful bill that was still to come for the beer and liquor that might be consumed one could never get in advance more than a guess as to this from a saloon keeper and then when the time came he always came to you scratching his head and saying that he had guessed too low but that he had done his best your guess had gotten so very drunk by him you were sure to be cheated unmercifully and that even though you thought yourself the dearest of the hundreds of friends he had he would begin to serve your guess out of a keg that was half full and finish with one that was half empty and then you would be charged for two kegs of beer he would agree to serve a certain quality at a certain price and when the time came you and your friends would be drinking some horrible poison that could not be described but you would get nothing for your pains but a ruined evening while as per going to the law about it you might as well go to heaven at once the saloon keeper stood in with all the big politics men in the district and when you had once found out what it meant to get into trouble with such people you would know enough to pay what you were told to pay and shut up what made all this the more painful was that it was so hard on the few that had really done their best there was poor old ponus yocubus for instance he had already given five dollars and did not everyone know that yocubus shed vealus had just mortgaged his delicate tessin store for two hundred dollars to meet several months overdue ren and then there was withered old pony annele who was a widow and had three children and the rheumatism besides and did washing for the tradespeople on halstead street at prices it would break your heart to hear name annele had given the entire profit of her chickens for several months eight of them she owned and she kept them in a little place fenced around on her back stairs all day long the children of annele were raking in the dump for food for these chickens and sometimes when the competition there was too fierce you might see them on halstead street walking close to the gutters and with their mother following to see that no one robbed them of their finds money could not tell the value of these chickens to old mrs. rufnene she valued them differently for she had a feeling that she was getting something for nothing by means of them that with them she was getting the better of a world that was getting the better of her in so many other ways so she watched them every hour of the day and had learned to see like an owl at night to watch them then one of them had been stolen long ago and not a month passed that someone did not try to steal another as the frustrating of this one attempt involved the score of false alarms it will be understood what a tribute old mrs. rufnene brought just because keda el's beta had once loaned her some money for a few days and saved her from being turned out of her house more and more friends gathered round while the lamentation about these things was going on some drew newer hoping to overhear the conversation who were themselves among the guilty and surely that was a thing that tried the patience of the saint finally there came urges urged by some and the story was retold to him urges listened in silence with his great black eyebrows knitted now and then there would come a gleam underneath them and he would glance about the room perhaps he would have liked to go at some of those fellows with his big flinched fists but then doubtless he realized how little good it would do him no bill would be any less for turning out anyone at this time and then there would be the scandal and urges wanted nothing except to get away with onah and to let the world go its own way so his hands relaxed and he merely said quietly it is done and there is no use in weeping theta as beta then his look turned toward onah who stood close to his side and he saw the wide look of terror in her eyes little one he said in a low voice do not worry it will not matter to us we will pay them all somehow I will work harder that was always what urges said one had grown used to it as the solution of all difficulties I will work harder he had said that in Lithuania when one official had taken his passport from him and another had arrested him for being without it and the two had divided a third of his belongings he had said it again in New York when the smooth spoken agent had taken them in hand and made them pay such high prices and almost prevented their leaving his place in spite of their pain now he said it a third time and onah drew a deep breath it was so wonderful to have a husband just like a grown woman and a husband who could solve all problems and who was big and strong the last psalm of little Sebastianus had been stifled and the orchestra had once more been reminded of its duty the ceremony begins again but there are few now left to dance with and so very soon the collection is over and promiscuous dances once more begin it is now after midnight however and things are not as they were before the dancers are dull and heavy most of them have been drinking hard and have long ago passed the stage of acceleration they dance in monotonous measure round after round hour after hour with eyes fixed upon vacancy as if they were only half conscious in a constantly growing stupor the men grasp the women very tightly but there will be half an hour together when they will see the other spaces some couples do not care to dance and have retired to the corners where they sit with their arms and laced others who have been drinking still more wander about the room bumping into everything some are in groups of two or three singing each group its own song as time goes on there is a variety of drunkenness among the younger men especially some stagger about in each whispering maudlin words others start quarrels upon the slightest pretext and come to blows that have to be pulled apart now the fat policeman awakens definitely and feels of his club to see that it is ready for business he has to be prompt for these two o'clock in the morning fights if they once get out of hand are like a forest fire and may mean the whole reserves at the station the thing to do is to crack every fighting head that you see before there are so many fighting heads that you cannot crack any of them there is but scan account kept of cracked heads in the back of the yards for men who have to crack the heads of animals all day seem to get into the habit and to practice on their friends and even on their families between times this makes it a cause for congratulation that by modern methods a very few men can do the painfully necessary work of head-cracking for the whole of the culture world there is no fight that night perhaps because Jurgis too is watchful even more so than the police Jurgis has drunk a great deal as anyone naturally would on an occasion when it all has to be paid for whether it is drunk or not but he is a very steady man and does not easily lose his temper only once there is a tight shave and that is the fault of Maria Pachinstas Maria has apparently concluded about two hours ago that if the altar in the corner with the deity in soiled white be not the true home of the muses it is at any rate the nearest substitute on earth attainable and Maria is just fighting drunk when there come to her ears the facts about the villains who have not paid that night Maria goes on the warpath straight off without even the preliminary of a good cursing and when she is pulled off it is with the coke-tollers of two villains in her hands fortunately the policeman is disposed to be reasonable and so it is not Maria who is flung out of the place all this interrupts the music for not more than a minute or two then again the merciless tune begins the tune that has been played for the last half hour without one single change it is an American tune this time one which they have picked up on the streets all seem to know the words of it or at any rate the first line of it which they hum to themselves over and over again without rest in the good old summertime in the good old summertime in the good old summertime in the good old summertime there seems to be something hypnotic about this with its endlessly recurring dominance it has put a stupor upon everyone who hears it as well as upon the men who are playing it no one can get away from it or even think of getting away from it it is three o'clock in the morning and they have danced out all their joy and danced out all their strength and all the strength that unlimited drink can give them and still there is no one among them who has the power to think of stopping promptly at seven o'clock this same Monday morning they will, every one of them have to be in their places at Durham's or Brown's or Jones's working clothes if one of them be a minute late he will be docked an hour's pay and if he be many minutes late he will be apt to find his brass check turned to the wall which will send him out to join the hungry mob that waits every morning at the gates of the packing houses from six o'clock until nearly half past eight there is no exception to this rule not even little little Ona who has asked for a holiday the day after her wedding day a holiday without pay and been refused while there are so many who are anxious to work as you wish there is no occasion for incommoting yourself with those who must work otherwise little Ona is nearly ready to paint and half of them is super herself because of the heavy scent in the room she has not taken a drop no one else there is literally burning alcohol as the lamps are burning oil some of the men who are sound asleep in their chairs or on the floor are reeking of it so that you cannot go near them now and then Yurgis gazes at her hungrily he has long since forgotten his shyness but then the crowd is there and he still waits and watches the door where a carriage is supposed to come and finally he will wait no longer but comes up to Ona who turns white and trembles he puts her shawl about her and then his own coat they live only two blocks away and Yurgis does not care about the carriage there is almost no farewell the dancers do not notice them and all of the children and many of the old folks have fallen asleep in their sheer exhaustion Dede Athanas is asleep and so are the Shedvilises husband and wife the former snoring in octaves there is Teta Elsbeta and Maria sobbing loudly and then there is only the silent night with the stars beginning to pale a little in the east Yurgis without a word lists Ona in his arms and strides out with her and sinks her head upon his shoulder with a moan when he reaches home he is not sure whether she has fainted or is asleep and when he has to hold her with one hand while he unlocks the door he sees that she has opened her eyes you shall not go to Browns today little one he whispers as he climbs the stairs and she catches his arm and terror gasping no, no I dare not it will ruin us but he answers her again leave it to me leave it to me I will earn more money I will work harder end of chapter one recording by Tom Weiss chapter two of the jungle this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Tom Weiss the jungle by Upton Sinclair chapter two Yurgis talked lightly about work because he was young they told him stories about the breaking down of men there in the stockyards of Chicago and of what had happened to them afterward stories to make your flesh creep but Yurgis would only laugh he had only been there for months and he was young and a giant besides there was too much health in him he could not even imagine how it would feel to be beaten that is well enough for men like you he would say silkness cuny fellows but my back is broad Yurgis was like a boy a boy from the country he was the sort of man the bosses like to get hold of the sort they make it a grievance hold of when he was told to go to a certain place he would go there on the run when he had nothing to do for the moment he would stand around fidgeting dancing with the overflow of energy that was in him if he were working in a line of men the line always moved too slowly for him and you could pick him out by his impatience and restlessness that was why he had been picked out on one important occasion for Yurgis had stood outside of Brown and Company's central time station not more than half an hour the second day of his arrival in Chicago before he had been beckoned by one of the bosses of this he was very proud and it made him more disposed than ever to laugh at the pessimists in vain would they all tell him that there were men in that crowd from which he had been chosen who had stood there a month and not been chosen yet yes he would say but what sort of men broken down tramps and good for nothings fellows who have spent all their money drinking and want to get more for it do you want me to believe that with these arms and he would clench his fists and hold them up in the air so that you might see the rolling muscles that with these arms people will ever let me starve it is plain they would answer to this that you have come from the country and from very far in the country and this was the fact for Yorgos had never seen a city and scarcely even a fair size town until he had set out to make his fortune in the world and earn his right to Ona his father and his father's father before him and as many ancestors back as legend could go had lived in that part of Lithuania known as Relovcha the imperial forest this is a great track of a hundred thousand acres which from time immemorial has been a hunting preserve of the nobility there are a very few peasants settled in it holding title from ancient times and one of these was Antonas Rudkis who had been reared himself and had reared his children in turn upon half a dozen acres of cleared land in the midst of a wilderness there had been one son besides Yorgos and one sister the former had been drafted into the army that had been over ten years ago but since that day nothing had ever been heard of him the sister was married and her husband had bought the place when old Antonas had decided to go with his son it was nearly a year and a half ago that Yorgos had met Ona at a horse fair a hundred miles from home Yorgos had never expected to get married he had laughed at it as a foolish trap for a man to walk into but here without ever having spoken the word to her with no more than the exchange of half a dozen smiles he found himself purple in the face with embarrassment and terror asking her parents to sell her to him for his wife and his father's two horses he had been sent to the fair to sell but Ona's father proved is a rock the girl was yet a child and he was a rich man and his daughter was not to be had in that way so Yorgos went home with a heavy heart and that spring and summer toiled and tried hard to forget in the fall after the harvest was over he saw that it would not do the full fortnight's journey lay between him and Ona he found an unexpected state of affairs for the girl's father had died and his estate was tied up with creditors Yorgos' heart leaped as he realized that now the prize was within his reach there was El's beta Lucoshite Teta or aunt as they called her Ona's stepmother and there were her six children of all ages there was also her brother Yonas a dried up little man who had worked upon the farm there were people of great consequence as it seemed to Yorgos fresh out of the woods Ona knew how to read and knew many other things that he did not know and now the farm had been sold and the whole family was adrift all they owned in the world being about 700 rubles which is half as many dollars they would have had three times that but it had gone to court and the judge had decided against them and it had cost the balance to get him to change his decision Ona might have married and left them but she would not or she loved Teta El's beta it was Yonas who suggested they all go to America where a friend of his had gotten rich he would work for his part and the women would work and some of the children doubtless they would live somehow Yorgos too had heard of America that was a country where they said a man might earn three rubles a day and Yorgos figured what three rubles a day would mean with prices as they were where he lived and decided forthwith that he would go to America and marry and be a rich man in the bargain in that country rich or poor a man was free it was said he did not have to go into the army he did not have to pay out his money to restily officials he might do as he pleased and count himself as good as any other man so America was a place of which lovers and young people dreamed if one could only manage to get the price of a passage he could count his troubles at an end it was a range that they should leave the following spring and meantime Yorgos sold himself to a contractor for a certain time and tramped nearly 400 miles from home with a gang of men to work upon a railroad in Schmolensk this was a fearful experience with filth and bad food and cruelty and overwork but Yorgos stood it and came out in fine trim and with 80 rubles sewed up in his coat he did not drink or fight because he was thinking all the time and for the rest he was a quiet, steady man who did what he was told to did not lose his temper often and when he did lose it made the offender anxious that he should not lose it again when they paid him off he dodged the company gamblers and drum shops and so they tried to kill him but he escaped and tramped it home working at odd jobs and sleeping always with one eye open so in the summertime they had all set out for America at the last moment there joined them Maria Bachinskas who was a cousin of Ona's Maria was an orphan and had worked since childhood for a rich farmer at Vilna who beat her regularly it was only at the age of 20 that it had occurred to Maria to try her strength when she had risen up and nearly murdered the man and then come away there were 12 in all in the party 5 adults and 6 children and Ona who was a little of both they had a hard time on the passage there was an agent who helped them but he proved a scoundrel and got them into a trap with some officials and cost them a good deal of their precious money which they clung to with such horrible fear this happened to them again in New York or of course they knew nothing about the country and had no one to tell them and it was easy for a man in a blue uniform to lead them away and to take them to a hotel and keep them there and make them pay enormous charges to get away the law says that the rate card shall be on the door of a hotel but it does not say that it shall be in Lithuania it was in the stockyards that Ona's friend had gotten rich and so to Chicago the party was bound they knew that one word Chicago and that was all they needed to know at least until they reached the city then tumbled out of the cars without ceremony they were no better off than before they stood staring down the vista of Dearborn Street with its big black buildings towering in the distance unable to realize that they had arrived and why when they said Chicago people no longer pointed in some direction but instead looked perplexed or laughed or went on without paying any attention they were pitiable in their helplessness above all things they stood in deadly terror of any sort of person in official uniform and so whenever they saw a policeman they would cross the street and hurry by for the whole of the first day they wandered about in the midst of deafening confusion utterly lost and it was only at night that towering in the doorway of a house they were finally discovered and taken by a policeman to the station in the morning an interpreter was found and they were taken and put upon a car and taught a new word stockyards their delight at discovering ventured without losing another share of their possessions it would not be possible to describe they sat and stared out of the window they were on a street which seemed to run on forever mile after mile 34 of them if they had known it and each side of it won uninterrupted row of wretched little two-story frame buildings down every side street they could see it was the same never a hill and never a hollow but always the same endless vista of ugly and dirty little wooden buildings here and there would be a bridge crossing a filthy creek with hard baked mud shores and dingy sheds and docks along it here and there would be a railroad crossing with a tangle of switches and locomotives puffing and rattling freight cars filing by here and there would be a great factory a dingy building with innumerable windows in it and immense volumes of smoke pouring from the chimneys darkening the air above and making filthy the earth beneath but after each of these interruptions the desolate procession would begin again the procession of dreary little buildings a full hour before the party reached the city they had begun to note the perplexing changes in the atmosphere it grew darker all the time and upon the earth the grass seemed to grow less green every minute as the train sped on the colors of things became dingier the fields were grown parched and yellow the landscape hideous and bare and along with the thickening spoke they began to notice another circumstance a strange pungent odor they were not sure that it was unpleasant this odor some might have called it sickening but their taste in odors was not developed and they were only sure that it was curious now sitting in the trolley car they realized that they were on their way to the home of it that they had traveled all the way from Lithuania to it it was now no longer something far off and faint that you caught in whiffs you could literally taste it as well as smell it you could take hold of it almost and examine it at your leisure they were divided in their opinions about it it was an elemental odor raw and crude it was rich almost rancid sensual and strong there were some who drank it in as if it were an intoxicant there were others who put their handkerchiefs to their faces the new immigrants were still tasting it lost in wonder when suddenly the car came to a halt and the door was clung open and a boy shouted stockyards they were left standing upon the corner staring down a side street there were two rows of brick houses and between them a vista half a dozen chimneys tall as the tallest of buildings touching the very sky and leaping for them half a dozen columns of smoke thick oily and black as night it might have come from the center of this smoke where the fires of the ages still smoldered it came as if self-impelled driving all before it a perpetual explosion it was inexhaustible one stared waiting to see it stop but still the great streams rolled out they spread in vast clouds overhead writhing curling then uniting in one giant river they streamed away down the sky stretching the black hall as far as the eye could reach then the party became aware of another thing this too like the color was a thing elemental it was a sound a sound made up of ten thousand little sounds you scarcely noticed it at first it sunk into your consciousness a vague disturbance a trouble it was like the murmuring of the bees in the spring the whisperings of the forest it suggested endless activity the rumblings of a world in motion it was only by an effort that one could realize that it was made by animals that it was the distant lowing of ten thousand cattle the distant grunting of ten thousand swine they would have liked to follow it up but at last they had no time for adventures just then the policeman on the corner was beginning to watch them and so as usual they started up the street scarcely had they gone a block however before Jonas was heard to give a cry and began pointing excitedly across the street before they could gather the meaning of his breathless ejaculations he had bounded away and they saw him enter a shop over which was a sign Jay Chetviles delicatessen when he came out again he was in company with a very stout gentleman in shirt sleeves and an apron clasping Jonas by both hands and laughing hilariously then Teta Elsbeta recollected suddenly that Chetviles had been the name of the mythical friend who had made his fortune in America to find that he had been making it in the delicatessen business was an extraordinary piece of good fortune at this juncture though it was well on in the morning and the children were beginning to whimper thus was the happy ending to a woeful voyage the two families literally fell upon each other's necks for it had been years since Jay Chetviles had met a man from his part of Lithuania before half the day they were lifelong friends Jay Chetviles understood all the pitfalls of this new world and could explain all of its mysteries he could tell them the things they ought to have done in the different emergencies and what was still more to the point he could tell them what to do now he would take them to Pony and Nile who kept a boarding house the other side of the yards old Mrs. Yuknine he explained had not what one would call choice accommodations but they might do for the moment to this Teta Elsbeta hastened to respond that nothing could be too cheap to suit them just them for they were quite terrified over the sum they had had to expend a very few days of practical experience in this land of high wages had been sufficient to make clear to them the cruel fact that it was also a land of high prices and that in it the poor man was almost as poor as in any other corner of the earth and so there vanished in a night all the wonderful dreams of wealth that had been haunting Yurgis what had made the discovery all the more painful was that they were spending, at American prices money which they had earned at home rates of wages and so were really being cheated by the world the last two days they had all that starved themselves it made them quite sick to pay the prices that the railroad people asked them for food yet when they saw the home they could not but recoil even so in all their journey they had seen nothing so bad as this Pony Anile had a four room flat in one of that wilderness of two story framed tenements that lie back of the yards there were four such flats in each building and each of the four was a boarding house for the occupancy of foreigners Lithuanians Poles Slovaks or Bohemians some of these places were kept by private persons some were cooperative there would be an average of half a dozen borders to each room sometimes there were 13 or 14 to one room 50 or 60 to a flat each one of the occupants furnished his own accommodations that is a mattress the mattresses would be spread upon the floor and rows and there would be nothing else in the place except a stove it was by no means unusual for two men to own the same mattress in common one working by day and using it by night and the other working at night and using it in the daytime very frequently a lodging housekeeper would rent the same beds to double shifts of men Mrs. Yuknine the wizened little woman with a wrinkled face her home was unthinkably healthy you could not enter by the front door at all owing to the mattresses and when you tried to go up the back stairs you found that she had walled up most of the porch with old boards to make a place to keep her chickens it was a standing jest of the borders that Anile cleaned house by letting the chickens loose in the rooms undoubtedly this did keep down the vermin but it seemed probable in view of all the circumstances that the old lady regarded it rather as feeding the chickens than as cleaning the rooms the truth was that she had definitely given up the idea of cleaning anything under pressure of an attack of rheumatism which had kept her doubled up in one corner of her room for over a week during which time eleven of her borders heavily in her debt had concluded to try their chances of employment in Kansas City this was July and the fields were green one never saw the fields nor any green thing whatever in Packingtown but one could go out on the road and hobo it as the men phrased it and see the country and have a long rest and an easy time riding on the freight cars to which the new arrivals were welcomed there was nothing better to be had they might not do so well by looking further for mrs. Yuknine had at least kept one room for herself and her three little children and now offer to share this with the women and the girls of the party they could get bedding at a second hand store she explained and they would not need any while the weather was so hot doubtless they would all sleep such nights as this as did nearly all of her guests tomorrow Yorga said when they were left alone tomorrow I will get a job and perhaps Jonas will get one also and then we can get a place of our own later that afternoon he and Ona went out to take a walk and look about them to see more of this district which was to be their home in back of the yards the dreary two story frame houses were scattered farther apart and there were great spaces bear that seemingly had been overlooked by the great soar of a city as it spread itself over the surface of the prairie these bear places were grown up with dingy yellow weeds hiding innumerable tomato cans innumerable children played upon them chasing one another here and there screaming and fighting the most uncanny thing about this neighborhood was the number of children you thought there must be a school just out and that it was only after long acquaintance that you were able to realize that there was no school but that these were the children of the neighborhood that there were so many children to the block in packing town that nowhere on its streets could a horse and buggy move faster than a walk it could not move faster anyhow on account of the state of the streets those through which Yorgos and Ona were walking resembled streets less than they did a miniature topographical map the roadway was commonly several feet lower than the level of the houses which were sometimes joined by high boardwalks there were no pavements these were mountains and valleys and rivers gullies and ditches and great hollows full of stinking green water in these pools the children played and rolled about in the mud of the streets here and there one noticed them digging in it after trophies which they had stumbled on one wondered about this as also about the swarms of flies which hung about the scene literally blackening the air and the strange fetid odor which assailed one's nostrils a ghastly odor of all the dead things of the universe it impelled the visitor to questions and then the residents would explain quietly that all this was made land and that it had been made by using it as a dumping ground for the city garbage after a few years the unpleasant effect of this would pass away it was said but meantime in hot weather and especially when it rained the flies were apt to be annoying was it not unhelpful the danger would ask and the residents would answer perhaps but there is no telling a little way farther on and Jurgis and Ona staring open eyed and wondering came to the place where this made ground was in the process of making here was a great hole perhaps two city blocks square and with long files of garbage waggings creeping into it the place had an odor for which there are no light words and it was sprinkled over with children who raked in it from dawn till dark sometimes visitors from the packing houses would wander out to see this dump and they would stand by and debate as to whether the children were eating the food they got or merely collecting it for the chickens at home apparently none of them ever went down to find out beyond this dump there stood a great brickyard with smoking bodies first they took out the soil to make bricks and then they filled it up again with garbage which seemed to Jurgis and Ona a felicitous arrangement characteristic of an enterprising country like America a little way beyond was another great hole which they had emptied and not yet filled up this held water and all summer it stood there with the nearby soil draining into it in the sun and then when winter came somebody cut the ice on it and sold it to the people of the city this too seemed to the newcomers an economical arrangement for they did not read the newspapers and their heads were not full of troublesome thoughts about germs they stood there while the sun went down upon this scene and the sky in the west turned blood red and the tops of shone like fire Jurgis and Ona were not thinking of the sunset however their backs were turned to it and all their thoughts were of packing town which they could see so plainly in the distance the line of the building stood clear cut and black against the sky here and there out of the mass rose the great chimneys with the river of smoke streaming away to the end of the world it was a study in colors now this smoke in the sunset light it was black and brown and gray and purple all the sorted suggestions of the place were gone in the twilight it was a vision of power to the two who stood watching while the darkness swallowed it up it seemed a dream of wonder with its talc of human energy of things being done of employment for thousands of men of opportunity and freedom of life and love and joy when they came away arm in arm Jurgis was saying tomorrow I shall go there and get a job end of chapter 2 recording by Tom Weiss chapter 3 of the jungle this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Tom Weiss the jungle by Upton Sinclair chapter 3 in his capacity as delicatessen vendor Jurgis had many acquaintances among these was one of the special policemen employed by Durham whose duty it frequently was to pick out men for employment Jurgis had never tried it and expressed a certainty that he could get some of his friends a job through this man it was agreed after consultation that he should make the effort with old Antonos and with Jonas Jurgis was confident of his ability to get work for himself unassisted by anyone as we have said before he was not mistaken in this he had gone to Browns and stood there and followed in half an hour before one of the bosses noticed his form towering above the rest and signaled to him the colloquy which followed was brief end to the point speak English no, bitlainian Jurgis had studied this word carefully job j a nod worked here before signals and gesticulations on the part of the boss vigorous shakes of the head by Jurgis shovel guts no stem more shakes of the head cernos bagaichdes schluafa imitative motions c c door doories pointing c tomorrow 7 o'clock Brightoy Crespetes Septigny Decoy Thank you sir and that was all Jurgis turned away and then in a sudden rush the full realization of his triumph swept over him and he gave a yell and a jump and started off on a run he had a job and he went all the way home as if upon wings and burst into the house like a cyclone to the rage of the numerous lodgers who had just turned in for their daily sleep meantime Jurgis had been to see his friend the policeman and received encouragement so it was a happy party there being no more to be done that day the shop was left under the care and her husband sallied forth to show his friends the sights of Packingtown Jurgis did this with the air of a country gentleman escorting a party of visitors over his estate he was an old time resident and all these wonders had grown up under his eyes and he had a personal pride in them the packers might own the land but he claimed the landscape and there was no one to say they passed down the busy street that led to the yards it was still early morning and everything was at its high tide of activity a steady stream of employees was pouring through the gate employees of the hire sort at this hour clerks and stenographers and such for the women there were waiting big two horse wagons which set off at a gallop as fast as they were filled at a distance there was heard again the lowing of cattle a sound as of a far off ocean calling they followed it this time as eager as children in sight of a circus menagerie which indeed the scene a good deal resembled they crossed the railroad tracks and then on each side of the street were the pens full of cattle they would have stopped to look but Yokubis hurried them on there was a stairway and a raised gallery from which everything could be seen here they stood staring breathless with wonder there is over a square mile of space in the yards and more than half of it is occupying by cattle pens north and south as far as the eye can reach there stretches a sea of pens and they were all filled so many cattle had ever dreamed existed in the world red cattle black white and yellow cattle old cattle and young cattle great bellowing bulls and little calves not an hour born me guide nook cows and fierce long horn texas steers the sound of them here was as of all the barnyards of the universe and as for counting them it would have taken all day here and there ran long alleys blocked at intervals by gates and Yokubis told them that the number of these gates was 25,000 Yokubis had recently been reading a newspaper article which was full of statistics such as that and he was very proud as he repeated them and made his guests cry out with wonder Yorgos too had a little of this sense of pride just gotten a job and become a sharer in all this activity a cog in this marvelous machine here and there about the alleys galloped men upon horseback booted and carrying long whips they were very busy calling to each other and to those who were driving the cattle they were drovers and stockraisers who had come from far states and brokers and commission merchants and buyers for all the big houses here and there they would stop to inspect a bunch of cattle and there would be a parley brief and business life the buyer would nod or drop his whip and that would mean a burden and he would note it in his little book along with hundreds of others he had made that morning then Yokubis pointed out the place where the cattle were driven to be weighed upon a great scale that would weigh 100,000 pounds at once and they would load it automatically it was near to the east entrance that they stood and all along this east side of the yards ran the railroad tracks into which the cars were run loaded with cattle all night long this had been going on and now the pens were full by tonight they would all be empty and the same thing would be done again and what will become of all these creatures cried Teta L's beta by tonight Yokubis answered they will all be killed and cut up and over there on the other side of the packing houses are more railroad tracks where the cars come to take them away there were 250 miles of track within the yards their guide went on to tell them they brought about 10,000 head of cattle every day and as many hogs and half as many sheep which meant some 10 million live creatures turned into food every year one stood and watched and little by little caught the drift of the tide as it set in the direction of the packing houses there were groups of cattle being driven to the chutes which were roadways about 15 feet wide raised high above the pens in these chutes the stream of animals was continuous it was quite uncanny to watch them pressing on to their fate all unsuspicious a very river of death our friends were not poetical and the site suggested to them no metaphors of human destiny they thought only of the wonderful efficiency of it all the chutes into which the hogs went climbed high up to the very top of the distant buildings and Yokubis explained that the hogs went up by the power of their own legs and then their weight carried them back through all the processes necessary to make them into pork they don't waste anything here said the guide and then he laughed and added a witticism which he was pleased that his unsophisticated friends should take to be his own they use everything about the hog except the squeal in front of Brown's general office building there grows a tiny plot of grass and this you may know is the only bit of green thing in Packingtown likewise this just about the hog and his squeal the stock and trade of all the guides is the one gleam of humor that you will find there after they had seen enough of the pens the party went up the street to the mass of buildings which occupy the center of the yards these buildings made of brick and stained with innumerable layers of Packingtown work were painted all over with advertising signs from which the visitor realized suddenly that he had come to the home of many of the torments of his life it was here that they made those products with the wonders of which they tested him so by placards that defaced the landscape when he traveled and by staring advertisements in the newspapers and magazines by silly little jingles and gaudy pictures that lurk for him around every street corner here was where they made browns imperial hams and bacon browns dressed beef browns excelsior sausages here was the headquarters of Durham's pure leaf lard of Durham's breakfast bacon Durham's canned beef, potted ham devil chicken, peerless fertilizer entering one of the Durham buildings they found a number of other visitors waiting and before long there came a guide to escort them through the place they make a great feature of showing strangers through the packing plants for it is a good advertisement but Ponas Yacubus whispered maliciously that the visitors did not see any more than the packers wanted them to they climbed a long series of stairways outside of the building to the top of its five or six stories here was the shoot with its river of hogs all patiently toiling upward there was a place for them to rest to cool off and then through another passage where they went into a room from which there is no returning for hogs it was a long narrow room with a gallery along it for visitors at the head there was a great iron wheel about twenty feet in circumference with rings here and there along its edge upon both sides of this wheel there was a narrow space into which came the hogs at the end of their journey in the midst of them stood a great burly negro bare armed and bare chested he was resting for the moment for the wheel had stopped while the men were cleaning up in a minute or two however it began slowly to revolve and then the men upon each side of it sprang to work they had chains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog and the other end of the chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel so as the wheel turned a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and born aloft at the same instant the car was assailed by a most terrifying shriek the visitors started an alarm the women turned pale and shrank back the shriek was followed by another louder and yet more agonizing for once started upon that journey the hog never came back at the top of the wheel he was shunned it off upon a trolley and went sailing down the room and meantime another was swung up and then another and another until there was a double line of them each dangling by a foot kicking in frenzy and squealing the uproar was appalling perilous to the eardrums one feared there was too much sound for the room to hold that the walls must give way for the ceiling crack there were high squeals and low squeals, grunts and wails of agony there would come a momentary lull and then a fresh outburst louder than ever surging up to a deafening climax it was too much for some of the visitors the men would look at each other laughing nervously and the women would stand with hands clenched and the blood rushing to their faces and the tears starting in their eyes meantime heedless of all these things the men upon the floor were going about their work neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors made any difference to them one by one they hooked up the hogs and one by one with a swift stroke they slipped their throats there was a long line of hogs with squeals and lifeblood ebbing away together until at last each started again and vanished with a splash into a huge vat of boiling water it was also very business-like that one watched it fascinated pork-making by applied mathematics and yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs they were so innocent they came so very trustingly and they were so very human in their protests and so perfectly within their rights they had done nothing to deserve it and it was adding insult to injury as the thing was done here swinging them up in this cold-blooded impersonal way without a pretense of apology without the homage of a tear now and then a visitor wept to be sure but this slaughtering machine ran on visitors or no visitors it was like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon all unseen and unheeded buried out of sight and out of memory one could not stand it and watch very long without becoming philosophical without beginning to deal in symbols and similes and to hear the hog squeal of the universe was it permitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth or above the earth a heaven for hogs where they were required for all this suffering each one of these hogs was a separate creature some were white hogs some were black some were brown some were spotted some were old, some young some were long and lean some were monstrous and each of them had an individuality of his own a will of his own a hope and a heart's desire each was full of self-confidence of self-importance and a sense of dignity and trusting and strong in faith while a black shadow hung over him and a horrid fate waited in his pathway now suddenly it had swooped upon him and had seized him by the leg relentless remorseless it was all his protests, his screams were nothing to it it did its cruel will with him as if his wishes, his feelings had simply no existence at all it cut his throat and watched him gasp out of his life and now was one to believe that there was nowhere a god of hogs to whom this hog personality was precious to whom these hog squeals and agonies had a meaning who would take this hog into his arms and comfort him reward him for his work well done and show him the meaning of his sacrifice perhaps some glimpse of all this was in the thoughts of our humble-minded Yorgos as he turned to go on with the rest of the party and muttered, Diaz but I'm glad I'm not a hog the carcass hog was scooped out of the vat by machinery and then it fell to the second floor passing on the way through a wonderful machine with numerous scrapers which adjusted themselves to the size and shape of the animal and sent it out at the other end with nearly all of its bristles removed it was then again strung up by machinery and sent upon another trolley-ride this time passing between two lines of men who sat upon a raised platform each doing a certain single thing to the carcass as it came to him one scraped the outside of a leg another scraped the inside of the same leg one with a swift stroke cut the throat another with two swift strokes severed the head which fell to the floor to a hole another made a slit down the body a second opened the body wider a third with a saw cut the breastbone a fourth loosened the entrails a fifth pulled them out and they also slid through a hole in the floor there were men to scrape each side and men to scrape the back there were men to clean the carcass inside to trim it and wash it looking down this room one saw creeping slowly a line of dangling hogs a hundred yards in length and for every yard there was a man working as if a demon were after him at the end of this hog's progress every inch of the carcass had been gone over several times and then it was rolled into the chilling room where it stayed for 24 hours and where a stranger might lose himself in a forest freezing hogs before the carcass was admitted here however it had to pass a government inspector who sat in the doorway and felt of the glands in the neck for tuberculosis this government inspector did not have the manner of a man who was worked to death he was apparently not haunted by a fear that the hog might get by him before he had finished his testing if you were a sociable person he was quite willing to enter into conversation with you and to explain to you the deadly nature of the tomanes which are found in tubercular pork and while he was talking with you you could hardly be so ungrateful as to notice that a dozen carcasses were passing him untouched this inspector wore a blue uniform with brass buttons and he gave an atmosphere of authority to the scene and as it were put the stamp of official approval upon the things which were done in Durham's Eurgus went down the line with the rest of the visitors staring open mouth lost in wonder he had dressed hogs himself in the forest of Lithuania but he had never expected to live to see one hog dressed by several hundred men it was like a wonderful poem to him he took it all in guilelessly even to the conspicuous signs demanding immaculant cleanliness of the employees Eurgus was vexed when the cynical Yocubus translated these signs with sarcastic comments offering to take them to the secret rooms where the spoiled meats went to the doctor the party descended to the next floor where the various waste materials were treated here came the entrails to be scraped and washed clean for sausage casings men and women worked here in the midst of a sickening stench which caused the visitors to hasten by gasping to another room came all the scraps to be tanked which meant boiling and pumping off the grease to make soap and lard below they took out the refuse and this too was a region in which the visitors did not linger in still other places men were engaged in cutting up the carcasses that had been through the chilling rooms first there were the splitters the most expert workmen in the plant who earned as high as fifty cents an hour and did not a thing all day except chop hogs down the middle then there were cleaver men great giants with muscles of iron each had two men to attend him to slide the half carcass in front of him on the table and hold it while he chopped it and then turn each piece so that he might chop it once more his cleaver had a blade about two feet long and he never made but one cut he made it so neatly too that his implement did not smite through and dull itself there was just enough force for a perfect cut so through various yawning holes there slipped to the floor below to one room hands to another four quarters to another sides of pork one might go down to this floor and see the pickling rooms where the hands were put into vats and the great smoke rooms with their airtight iron doors in other rooms they prepared salt work there were whole cellars full of it there were great towers to the ceiling in yet other rooms they were putting up meat in boxes and barrels and wrapping hams and bacon in oiled paper ceiling and labeling and sewing them from the doors of these rooms went men with loaded trucks to the platform where freight cars were waiting to be filled and one went out there and realized with the start that he had come at last then the party went across the street to where they did the killing of beef where every hour they turned four or five hundred cattle into meat unlike the place they had left all this work was done on one floor and instead of there being one line of carcasses which moved to the workmen there were fifteen or twenty lines and the men moved from one to another of these this made a scene of intense activity a picture of human power wonderful to watch it was all in one great room like a circus amphitheater with a gallery for visitors running over the center along one side of the room ran a narrow gallery a few feet from the floor into which gallery the cattle were driven by men with goats which gave them electric shocks once crowded in there the creatures were prisoned in a separate pen by gates that shut leaving them no room to turn around and while they stood billowing and plunging over the top of the pen there leaned one of the knockers armed with a sledgehammer and watching for a chance to deal a blow the room echoed with thuds in quick succession and the stamping and kicking of the steers the instant the animal had fallen the knocker passed on to another while a second man raised a lever and the side of the pen was raised and the animal still kicking and struggling slid out to the killing-bed here a man put shackles about one leg and pressed another lever and the body was jerked up into the air there were 15 or 20 such pens and it was a matter of only a couple of minutes to knock 15 or 20 cattle and roll them out again once more the gates were open and another lot rushed in and so out of each pen there rolled a steady stream of carcasses which the men upon the killing-beds had to get out of the way the manner in which they did this was something to be seen and never forgotten they worked with furious intensity literally upon the run at a pace with which there is nothing to be compared to a football game it was all highly specialized labor each man having his task to do generally this would consist of only two or three specific cuts and he would pass down the line of 15 or 20 carcasses making these cuts upon each first there came the butcher to bleed them this meant one swift stroke so swift that you could not see it only the flash of the knife and before you could realize it the man had darted on to the next line and the stream of bright red was pouring out upon the floor this floor was half an inch deep with blood in spite of the best efforts of men who kept shoveling it through holes it must have made the floor slippery but no one could have guessed this by watching the men at work the carcass hung for a few minutes to bleed there was no time lost however for there were several hanging in each line and one was always ready it was let down to the ground and there came the headsman whose task it was to sever the head with two or three swift strokes then came the floorsman to make the first cut in the skin and then another to finish ripping the skin down the center and then half a dozen more in swift succession to finish after they were through the carcasses were again swung up and while a man with a stick examined the skin to make sure that it had not been cut and another rolled its tip and tumbled it through one of the inevitable holes in the floor the beef proceeded on its journey there were men to cut it and men to split it and men to gut it and scrape it clean inside there were some with hose which threw jets boiling water upon it and others who removed the feet and added the final touches in the end as with the hogs the finished beef was run into the chilling room to hang its appointed time the visitors were taken there and shown them all neatly hung in rows labeled conspicuously with the tags of the government inspectors and some which had been killed by a special process marked of the kosher rabbi certifying that it was fit for sale to the orthodox and then the visitors were taken to the other parts of the building to see what became of each particle of the waste material that had vanished through the floor and to the pickling rooms and the salting rooms the canning rooms and the packing rooms where choice meat was prepared for shipping in refrigerator cars destined to be eaten in houses of civilization afterward they went outside wandering about among the mazes of buildings in which was done the work auxiliary to this great industry there was scarcely a thing needed in the business that Durham and company did not make for themselves there was a great steam power plant and an electricity plant there was a barrel factory and a boiler repair shop there was a building to which the grease was piped and made into soap and lard and then there was a factory for making lard cans and another for making soap boxes there was a building in which the bristles were cleaned and dried for the making of hair cushions and such things there was a building where the skins were dried and tan there was another where heads and feet were made into glue and another where bones were made into fertilizer no tiniest particle of organic matter was wasted in Durham's out of the horns of cattle they made combs buttons, hairpins and imitation ivory out of the shin bones and other big bones they cut knife and toothbrush handles and mouthpieces for pipes out of the hoofs they cut hairpins and buttons before they made the rest into glue from such things as feet handles, hide clippings and sinews came such strange and unlikely products as gelatin, icing glass and phosphorus, bone black shoe blacking and bone oil they had curled hair works for the cattle tails and a wool for the sheepskins they made pepsin from the stomachs of the pigs and albumen from the blood and violin strings from the ill-smelling entrails when there was nothing else to be done with a thing they first put it into a tank and got out of it all the tallow and grease and then they made it into fertilizer all these industries were gathered into buildings nearby connected by galleries and railroads with the main establishment and it was estimated that they had handled nearly a quarter of a billion animals since the founding of the plant by the elder Durham generation or more ago if you count it with it the other big plants and they were now really all one it was so Yacubus informed them the greatest aggregation of labor and capital ever gathered in one place it employed 30,000 men it supported directly 250,000 people in its neighborhood it supported half a million it sent its products to every country in the civilized world and it furnished the food for no less than 30 million people to all these things our friends would listen open mouth it seemed to them impossible of belief that anything so stupendous could have been devised by mortal man that was why to Eurigus it seemed almost profanity to speak about the place as did Yacubus skeptically it was a thing as tremendous as the universe the laws and ways of its workings no more than the universe to be questioned or understood all that a mere man could do it seemed to Eurigus was to take a thing like this as he founded and do as he was told to be given a place in it and a share in its wonderful activities was a blessing to be grateful for as one was grateful for the sunshine and the rain Eurigus was even glad that he had not seen the place before meeting with his triumph for he felt that the size of it would have overwhelmed him but now he had been admitted he was a part of it all he had the feeling that this whole huge establishment had taken him under its protection and had become responsible for his welfare so guileless was he and ignorant of the nature of business that he did not even realize that he had become an employee of Brown's and that Brown and Durham were supposed by all the world to be deadly rivals were even required to be deadly rivals by the law of the land and ordered to try to ruin each other under penalty of fine and imprisonment End of Chapter 3 Recording by Tom Weiss