 26 After the elections, Yurgis stayed on in packing town and kept his job. The agitation to break up the police protection of criminals was continuing, and it seemed to him best to lay low for the present. He had nearly three hundred dollars in the bank and might have considered himself entitled to a vacation, but he had an easy job and force of habit kept him at it. Besides, Mike Scully, whom he consulted, advised him that something might turn up before long. Yurgis got himself a place in a boarding house with some congenial friends. He had already inquired of Anile and learned that Elzbita and her family had gone downtown, and so he gave no further thought to them. He went with a new set now, young, unmarried fellows who were sporty. Yurgis had long ago cast off his fertilizer clothing, and since going into politics he had donned a linen collar and a greasy red necktie. He had some reason for thinking of his dress, for he was making about eleven dollars a week, and two-thirds of it he might spend upon his pleasures without ever touching his savings. Sometimes he would ride downtown with a party of friends to the cheap theaters and the music halls and other haunts with which they were familiar. Many of the saloons in packing town had pool tables and some of them bowling alleys by means of which he could spend his evenings in petty gambling. Also there were cards and dice. One time Yurgis got into a game on a Saturday night and won prodigiously, and because he was a man of spirit he stayed in with the rest and the game continued until late Sunday afternoon. And by that time he was out over twenty dollars. On Saturday nights also a number of balls were generally given in packing town. Each man would bring his girl with him, paying half a dollar for a ticket and several dollars additional for drinks in the course of the festivities, which continued until three or four o'clock in the morning, unless broken up by fighting. During all this time the same man and woman would dance together, half stupefied with sensuality and drink. For long Yurgis discovered what scully had meant by something turning up. In May the agreement between the packers and the unions expired, and a new agreement had to be signed. Negotiations were going on, and the yards were full of talk of a strike. The old scale had dealt with the wages of the skilled men only, and of the members of the meat-workers union about two-thirds were unskilled men. In Chicago these latter were receiving, for the most part, eighteen and a half cents an hour, and the unions wished to make this the general wage for the next year. It was not nearly so large a wage as it seemed. In the course of the negotiations the union officers examined time checks to the amount of ten thousand dollars, and they found that the highest wages paid had been fourteen dollars a week, and the lowest two dollars and five cents, and the average of the whole six dollars and sixty-five cents. And six dollars and sixty-five cents was hardly too much for a man to keep a family on, considering the fact that the price of dressed meat had increased nearly fifty percent in the last five years, while the price of beef on the hoof had decreased as much. It would have seemed that the packers ought to be able to pay it. But the packers were unwilling to pay it. They rejected the union demand, and to show what their purpose was, a week or two after the agreement expired, they put down the wages of about a thousand men to sixteen and a half cents, and it was said that old man Jones had vowed he would put them to fifteen before he got through. There were a million and a half of men in the country looking for work, a hundred thousand of them right in Chicago. And were the packers to let the union stewards march into their places and bind them to a contract that would lose them several thousand dollars a day for a year? Not much. All this was in June, and before long the question was submitted to a referendum in the unions, and the decision was for a strike. It was the same in all the packing-house cities, and suddenly the newspapers and public woke up to face the gruesome spectacle of a meat famine. All sorts of pleas for a reconsideration were made, but the packers were obdurate, and all the while they were reducing wages and heading off shipments of cattle and rushing in wagon loads of mattresses and cuts. So the men boiled over, and one night telegrams went out from the union headquarters to all the big packing centers, to St. Paul, South Omaha, Sioux City, St. Joseph's, Kansas City, East St. Louis, and New York, and the next day at noon between fifty and sixty thousand men drew off their working clothes and marched out of the factories, and the great beef strike was on. Yurgis went to his dinner, and afterward he walked over to see Mike Scully, who lived in a fine house upon a street which had been decently paved and lighted for his especial benefit. Scully had gone into semi-retirement and looked nervous and worried. What do you want, he demanded when he saw Yurgis. I came to see if maybe you could get me a place during the strike, the other replied. And Scully knit his brows and eyed him narrowly. In that morning's papers Yurgis had read a fierce denunciation of the packers by Scully, who had declared that if they did not treat their people better the city authorities would end the matter by tearing down their plants. Now therefore Yurgis was not a little taken aback when the other demanded suddenly. See here, Rodgis, why don't you stick by your job? Yurgis started. Work as a scab, he cried. Why not? demanded Scully. What's that to you? But what stammered Yurgis? He had somehow taken it for granted that he should go out with his union. The packers need good men and need them bad, continued the other, and they'll treat a man right that stands by them. Why don't you take your chance and fix yourself? But said Yurgis, how could I ever be of any use to you in politics? You can't be it anyhow, said Scully abruptly. Why not? asked Yurgis. Hell, man, cried the other. Don't you know you're a Republican, and do you think I'm always going to elect Republicans? My brewer has found out already how we served him, and there is the deuce to pay. Yurgis looked dumbfounded. He had never thought of that aspect of it before. I could be a Democrat, he said. Yes, responded the other. But not right away. A man can't change his politics every day. And besides, I don't need you. There'd be nothing for you to do. And it's a long time to election day anyhow. And what are you going to do meantime? I thought I could count on you, began Yurgis. Yes, responded Scully. So you could. I never yet went back on a friend. But is it fair to leave the job I got you and come to me for another? I have had a hundred fellows after me today. And what can I do? I've put seventeen men on the city payroll to clean streets this one week. And do you think I can keep that up forever? It wouldn't do for me to tell other men what I tell you. But you've been on the inside, and you ought to have sense enough to see for yourself. What have you to gain by a strike? I hadn't thought, said Yurgis. Exactly, said Scully, but you'd better. Take my word for it. The strike will be over in a few days, and the men will be beaten. And meantime, what you can get out of it will be long to you. Do you see? And Yurgis saw. He went back to the yards and into the workroom. The men had left a long line of hogs in various stages of preparation. And the foreman was directing the feeble efforts of a score or two of clerks and stenographers and office boys to finish up the job and get them into the chilling rooms. Yurgis went straight up to him and announced, I have come back to work, Mr. Murphy. The boss's face lighted up. Good man, he cried. Come ahead. Just a moment, said Yurgis, checking his enthusiasm. I think I ought to get a little more wages. Yes, replied the other. Of course. What do you want? Yurgis had debated on the way. His nerve almost failed him now, but he clenched his hands. I think I ought to have three dollars a day, he said. All right, said the other promptly. And before the day was out, our friend discovered that the clerks and stenographers and office boys were getting five dollars a day, and then he could have kicked himself. So Yurgis became one of the new American heroes, a man whose virtues merited comparison with those of the martyrs of Lexington and Valley Forge. The resemblance was not complete, of course, for Yurgis was generously paid and comfortably clad and was provided with a spring cot and a mattress and three substantial meals a day. Also he was perfectly at ease and safe from all peril of life and limb, save only in the case that a desire for beer should lead him to venture outside of the stockyard's gates. And even in the exercise of this privilege he was not left unprotected. A good part of the inadequate police force of Chicago was suddenly diverted from its work of hunting criminals and rushed out to serve him. The police and the strikers also were determined that there should be no violence, but there was another party interested which was minded to the contrary, and that was the press. On the first day of his life as a strikebreaker, Yurgis quit work early, and in the spirit of bravado he challenged three men of his acquaintance to go outside and get a drink. They accepted and went through the big Halstead Street gate, where several policemen were watching and also some union pickets, scanning sharply those who passed in and out. Yurgis and his companions went south on Halstead Street, passed the hotel, and then suddenly half a dozen men started across the street toward them and proceeded to argue with them concerning the error of their ways. As the arguments were not taken in the proper spirit they went on to threats, and suddenly one of them jerked off the hat of one of the four and flung it over the fence. The man started after it, and then as a cry of scab was raised and a dozen people came running out of saloons and doorways, a second man's heart failed him and he followed. Yurgis and the fourth stayed long enough to give themselves the satisfaction of a quick exchange of blows, and then they too took to their heels and fled back of the hotel and into the yards again. Meantime, of course, policemen were coming on a run, and as a crowd gathered other police got excited and sent in a riot call. Yurgis knew nothing of this, but went back to Packers Avenue, and in front of the central time station he saw one of his companions, breathless and wild with excitement, narrating to an ever-growing throng how the four had been attacked and surrounded by a howling mob and had been nearly torn to pieces. While he stood listening, smiling cynically, several dapper young men stood by with notebooks in their hands, and it was not more than two hours later that Yurgis saw newsboys running about with armfuls of newspapers printed in red and black letters six inches high. Violence in the yards, strikebreakers surrounded by frenzied mob. If he had been able to buy all of the newspapers of the United States the next morning, he might have discovered that his beer-hunting exploit was being perused by some two-score millions of people and had served as a text per editorials in half the state and solemn businessmen's newspapers in the land. Yurgis was to see more of this as time passed. For the present, his work being over, he was free to ride into the city via railroad direct from the yards, or else to spend the night in a room where cots had been laid in rows. He chose the latter but to his regret for all night long gangs of strikebreakers kept arriving. As very few of the better class of working men could be got for such work, these specimens of the new American hero contained an assortment of the criminals and thugs of the city, besides Negroes and the lowest foreigners, Greeks, Romanians, Sicilians, and Slovaks. They had been attracted more by the prospect of disorder than by the big wages, and they made the night hideous with singing and carousing and only went to sleep when the time came for them to get up to work. In the morning before Yurgis had finished his breakfast, Pat Murphy ordered him to one of the superintendents, who questioned him as to his experience in the work of the killing room. His heart began to thump with excitement, for he divined instantly that his hour had come, that he was to be a boss. Some of the foremen were union members, and many who were not had gone out with the men. It was in the killing department that the packers had been left most in the lurch, and precisely here that they could least afford it. The smoking and canning and salting of meat might wait, and all the by-products might be wasted, but fresh meats must be had, or the restaurants and hotels and brownstone houses would feel the pinch, and then public opinion would take a startling turn. An opportunity such as this would not come twice to a man, and Yurgis seized it. Yes, he knew the work, the whole of it, and he could teach it to others, but if he took the job and gave satisfaction he would expect to keep it. They would not turn him off at the end of the strike. To which the superintendent replied that he might safely trust durums for that. They proposed to teach these unions a lesson, and most of all those foremen who had gone back on them. Yurgis would receive five dollars a day during the strike, and twenty-five a week after it was settled. So our friend got a pair of slaughter-pan boots and jeans, and flung himself at the task. It was a weird sight there on the killing-beds. A throng of stupid black negroes and foreigners who could not understand a word that was said to them, mixed with pale-faced, hollow-chested bookkeepers and clerks, half fainting for the tropical heat and the sickening stench of fresh blood, and all struggling to address a dozen or two cattle in the same place where, twenty-four hours ago, the old killing-gang had been speeding with their marvelous precision, turning out four hundred carcasses every hour. The negroes and the tufts from the levee did not want to work, and every few minutes some of them would feel obliged to retire and recuperate. In a couple of days Doron and company had electric fans up to cool off the rooms for them, and even couches for them to rest on. And meantime they could go out and find a shady corner and take a snooze, and as there was no place for anyone in particular and no system, it might be hours before their boss discovered them. As for the poor office employees, they did their best, moved to it by terror. Thirty of them had been fired in a bunch that first morning for refusing to serve, besides a number of women clerks and typewriters who had declined to act as waitresses. It was such a force as this that Jorias had to organize. He did his best, flying here and there, placing them in rows and showing them the tricks. He had never given an order in his life before, but he had taken enough of them to know, and he soon fell into the spirit of it and roared and stormed like any old stager. He had not the most tractable pupils, however. See here, boss, a big black buck would begin. If you don't like the way I does this job, you can get somebody else to do it. Then a crowd would gather and listen, muttering threats. After the first meal nearly all the steel knives had been missing, and now every negro had one, round to a fine point, hidden in his boots. There was no bringing order out of such a chaos, Jorias soon discovered, and he fell in with the spirit of the thing. There was no reason why he should wear himself out with shouting. If hides and guts were slashed and rendered useless, there was no way of tracing it to anyone. And if a man lay off and forgot to come back, there was nothing to be gained by seeking him, for all the rest would quip in the meantime. Everything went during the strike and the packers paid. Before long Jorias found that the custom of resting had suggested to some alert minds the possibility of registering at more than one place and earning more than one five dollars a day. When he caught a man at this he fired him, but it chanced to be in a quiet corner, and the man tendered him a ten-dollar bill and a wink, and he took them. Of course before long this custom spread, and Jorias was soon making quite a good income from it. In the face of handicaps such as these the packers counted themselves lucky if they could kill off the cattle that had been crippled in transit and the hogs that had developed disease. Frequently in the course of a two or three days trip in hot weather and without water some hog would develop cholera and die, and the rest would attack him before he had ceased kicking, and when the car was open there would be nothing of him left but the bones. If all the hogs in this carload were not killed at once they would soon be down with a dread disease and there would be nothing to do but make them into lard. It was the same with cattle that were gored and dying, or were limping with broken bones stuck through their flesh. They must be killed, even if brokers and buyers and superintendents had to take off their coats and help drive and cut and skin them. And meantime agents of the packers were gathering gangs of negroes in the country districts of the far south, promising them five dollars a day and board, and being careful not to mention there was a strike. Already carloads of them were on the way, with special rates from the railroads, and all traffic ordered out of the way. Many towns and cities were taking advantage of the chance to clear out their jails and workhouses. In Detroit the magistrates would release every man who agreed to leave town within twenty-four hours, and agents of the packers were in the courtrooms to ship them right. And meantime trainloads of supplies were coming in for their accommodation, including beer and whiskey, so that they might not be tempted to go outside. They hired thirty young girls in Cincinnati to pack fruit, and when they arrived put them at work canning corned beef, and put cots for them to sleep in a public hallway, through which the men passed. As the gangs came in day and night under the escort of squads of police, they stowed away in unused workrooms and storerooms, and in the car sheds crowded so closely together that the cots touched. In some places they would use the same room for eating and sleeping, and at night the men would put their cots upon the tables to keep away from the swarms of rats. But with all their best efforts the packers were demoralized. Ninety percent of the men had walked out, and they faced the task of completely remaking their labor force, and with the price of meat up thirty percent, and the public clamoring for a settlement, they made an offer to submit the whole question at issue to arbitration, and at the end of ten days the unions accepted it, and the strike was called off. It was agreed that all the men were to be re-employed within forty-five days, and that there was to be no discrimination against union men. This was an anxious time for Yurgis. If the men were taken back without discrimination, he would lose his present place. He sought out the superintendent who smiled grimly and bade him wait and see. Duramous strike-breakers were few of them leaving. Whether or not the settlement was simply a trick of the packers to gain time, or whether they really expected to break the strike and cripple the unions by the plan cannot be said. But that night there went out from the office of Duraman Company a telegram to all the big packing-centers, employ no union leaders. And in the morning, when the twenty-thousand men thronged into the yards with their dinner-pales and working-clothes, Yurgis stood near the door of the hog-trimming-room, where he had worked before the strike, and saw a throng of eager men, with a score or two of policemen watching them. And he saw a superintendent come out and walk down the line and pick out man after man that pleased him, and one after another came, and there were some men up near the head of the line who were never picked, they being the union stewards and delegates, and the men Yurgis had heard making speeches at the meetings. Each time, of course, there were louder murmurings and angrier looks. Over where the cattle butchers were waiting, Yurgis heard shouts and saw a crowd, and he hurried there. One big butcher who was president of the Packing Trades Council had been passed over five times, and the men were wild with rage. They had appointed a committee of three to go in and see the superintendent, and the committees had made three attempts, and each time the police had clubbed them back from the door. Then there were yells and hoots, continuing until at last the superintendent came to the door. We all go back, or none of us do, cried a hundred voices. And the other shook his fist at them and shouted, You went out of here like cattle, and like cattle, you'll come back. Then suddenly the big butcher president leaped upon a pile of stones and yelled, It's off, boys, will all of us quit again. And so the cattle butchers declared a new strike on the spot, and gathering their members from other plants where the same trick had been played, they marched down Packers Avenue, which was thronged with a dense mass of workers cheering wildly. Men who had already got to work on the killing beds dropped their tools and joined them. Some galloped here and there on horseback, shouting the tidings, and within half an hour the whole of Packingtown was on strike again, and beside itself with fury. There was quite a different tone in Packingtown after this. The place was a seething cauldron of passion, and the scab who ventured into it fared badly. There were one or two of these incidents each day, the newspapers detailing them, and always blaming them upon the unions. But ten years before, when there were no unions in Packingtown, there was a strike and national troops had to be called, and there were pitched battles fought at night by the light of blazing freight trains. Packingtown was always a center of violence. In Whiskey Point, where there were a hundred saloons and one glue factory, there was always fighting, and always more of it in hot weather. Anyone who had taken the trouble to consult the station house blotter would have found that there was less violence that summer than ever before, and this while twenty thousand men were out of work, and with nothing to do all day but proved upon bitter wrongs. There was no one to picture the battle the union leaders were fighting, to hold this huge army in rank, to keep it from straggling and pillaging, to cheer and encourage and guide a hundred thousand people of a dozen different tongues through six long weeks of hunger and disappointment and despair. Meantime the Packers had set themselves definitely to the task of making a new labor force. A thousand or two of strikebreakers were brought in every night and distributed among the various plants. Some of them were experienced workers, butchers, salesmen, and managers from the Packers' branch stores, and a few union men who had deserted from other cities. But the vast majority were green negroes from the cotton districts of the far south, and they were herded into the packing plants like sheep. There was a law forbidding the use of buildings as lodging houses unless they were licensed for the purpose, and provided with proper windows, stairways, and fire escapes. But here, in a paint room reached only by an enclosed chute, a room without a single window and only one door, a hundred men were crowded upon mattresses on the floor. Up on the third story of the hog-house of Jones was a storeroom without a window into which they crowded seven hundred men sleeping upon the bare springs of cuts and with a second shift to use them by day. And when the clamor of the public led to an investigation into these conditions and the mayor of the city was forced to order the enforcement of the law, the Packers got a judge to issue an injunction forbidding him to do it. Just at this time the mayor was boasting that he had put an end to gambling and prize-fighting in the city. But here a swarm of professional gamblers had leaked themselves with the police to fleece the strikebreakers, and any night in the big open space in front of Browns one might see brawny negroes stripped to the waist and pounding each other for money while a howling throng of three or four thousand surged about men and women, young white girls from the country rubbing elbows with big buck negroes with daggers in their boots, while rows of woolly heads peered down from every window of the surrounding factories. The ancestors of these black people had been savages in Africa, and since then they had been chattel slaves or had been held down by a community ruled by the traditions of slavery. Now for the first time they were free, free to gratify every passion, free to wreck themselves. They were wanted to break a strike, and when it was broken they would be shipped away and their present masters would never see them again. And so whiskey and women were brought in by the carload and sold to them, and hell was let loose in the yards. Every night there were stabbings and shootings. It was said that the Packers had blank permits which enabled them to ship dead bodies from the city without troubling the authorities. They lodged men and women on the same floor, and with the night there began a Saturnalia of debauchery, scenes such as never before had been witnessed in America. And as the women were the dregs from the brothels of Chicago, and the men were for the most part ignorant country negroes, the nameless diseases of vice were soon rife, and this where food was being handled, which was sent out to every corner of the civilized world. The Union stockyards were never a pleasant place, but now they were not only a collection of slaughterhouses, but also the camping place of an army of 15,000 or 20,000 human beasts. All day long, the blazing midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations, upon tens of thousands of cattle crowded into pens, whose wooden floors stank and steamed contagion, upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn railroad tracks, and huge blocks of dingy, neat factories, whose labyrinthine passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate them, and there were not merely rivers of hot blood, and carloads of moist flesh, and rendering vats and soap cauldrons, glue factories and fertilizer tanks that smelt like the craters of hell, there were also tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy laundry of the workers hung out to dry, and dining rooms littered with food and black with flies, and toilet rooms that were open sewers. And then at night, when this throng poured out into the streets to play, fighting, gambling, drinking and carousing, cursing and screaming, laughing and singing, playing banjos and dancing, they were worked in the yards all the seven days of the week, and they had their prize fights and crap games on Sunday nights as well. But then, around the corner, one might see a bonfire blazing, and an old gray-headed negrus lean and witch-like, her hair flying wild and her eyes blazing, yelling and chanting of the fires of perdition and the blood of the lamb, while men and women lay down upon the ground and moaned and screamed in convulsions of terror and remorse. Most were the stockyards during the strike, while the unions watched in sullen despair, and the country clamored like a greedy child for its food, and the Packers went grimly on their way. Each day they added new workers, and could be more stern with the old ones, could put them on piecework and dismiss them if they did not keep up the pace. Yorgos was now one of their agents in this process, and he could feel the change day by day, like the slow starting up of a huge machine. He had gotten used to being a master of men, and because of the stifling heat and the stench, and the fact that he was a scab and knew it and despised himself. He was drinking and developing a villainous temper, and he stormed and cursed and raged at his men, and drove them until they were ready to drop with exhaustion. Then one day, late in August, a superintendent ran into the place and shouted to Yorgos and his gang to drop their work and come. They followed him outside to where, in the midst of a dense throng, they saw several two-horse trucks waiting, and three patrol wagon loads of police. Yorgos and his men sprang upon one of the trucks, and the driver yelled to the crowd, and they went thundering away at a Some steers had just escaped from the yards, and the strikers had got hold of them, and there would be the chance of a scrap. They went out at the Ashland Avenue gate, and over in the direction of the dump. There was a yell as soon as they were sighted, men and women rushing out of houses and saloons as they galloped by. There were eight or ten policemen on the truck, however, and there was no disturbance until they came to a place where the street was blocked with a dense throng. Those on the flying truck yelled a warning and the crowd scattered bell-mell, disclosing one of the steers lying in its blood. There were a good many cattle-butchers about just then, with nothing much to do, and hungry children at home, and so someone had knocked out the steer, and as a first-class man can kill and dress one in a couple of minutes there were a good many stakes and roasts already missing. This called for punishment, of course, and the police proceeded to administer it by leaping from the truck and cracking at every head they saw. There were yells of rage and pain, and the terrified people fled into houses and stores, or scattered helter-skelder down the street. Yorgas and his gang joined in the sport, every man singling out his victim, and striving to bring him to bay and punch him. If he fled into a house, his pursuers would smash in the flimsy door and follow him up the stairs, hitting everyone who came within reach, and finally dragging his squealing quarry from under a bed, for a pile of old clothes in a closet. Yorgas and two policemen chased some men into a bar room. One of them took shelter behind the bar, where a policeman cornered him and proceeded to whack him over the back and shoulders until he lay down and gave a chance at his head. The others leaped a fence in the rear, walking the second policeman, who was fat, and as he came back, furious and cursing, a big Polish woman, the owner of the saloon, rushed in screaming and received a poke in the stomach that doubled her up on the floor. Meantime, Yorgas, who was of a practical temper, was helping himself at the bar, and the first policeman, who had laid out his men, joined him, handing out several more bottles and filling his pockets besides, and then, as he started to leave, cleaning off all the balance with a sweep of his club. The din of the glass crashing to the floor brought the fat Polish woman to her feet again, but another policeman came up behind her and put his knee into her back and his hands over her eyes, and then called to his companion, who went back and broke open the cash drawer and filled his pockets with the contents. Then the three went outside, and the man who was holding the woman gave her a shove and dashed out himself. The gang, having already got the carcass onto the truck, the party set out at a trot, followed by screams and curses, and a shower of bricks and stones from unseen enemies. These bricks and stones would figure in the accounts of the riot which would be sent out to a few thousand newspapers within an hour or two, but the episode of the cash drawer would never be mentioned again, save only in the heartbreaking legends of Packingtown. It was late in the afternoon when they got back, and they dressed out the remainder of the seer, and a couple of others that had been killed, and then knocked off for the day. Jörgis went downtown to supper with three friends who had been on the other trucks, and they exchanged reminiscences on the way. Afterward they drifted into a roulette parlor, and Jörgis, who was never lucky at gambling, dropped about fifteen dollars. To console himself he had to drink a good deal, and he went back to Packingtown about two in the morning very much the worse for his excursion, and it must be confessed entirely deserving the calamity that was in store for him. As he was going to the place where he slept he met a painted cheat woman in a greasy kimono, and she put her arm about his waist to steady him. They turned into a dark room they were passing, but scarcely had they taken two steps before suddenly a door swung open and a man entered carrying a lantern. Who's there? He called sharply, and Jörgis started to mutter some reply, but at the same instant the man raised his light which flashed in his face so that it was possible to recognize him, Jörgis stood stricken dumb, and his heart gave a leap like a mad thing. The man was Connor. Connor, the boss of the loading-gang, the man who had seduced his wife, who had sent him to prison, and wrecked his home, ruined his life. He stood there, staring, with the light shining full upon him. Jörgis had often thought of Connor since coming back to Packingtown, but it had been as of something far off that no longer concerned him. Now, however, when he saw him, alive and in the flesh, the same thing happened to him that had happened before. A flood of rage boiled up in him. A blind frenzy seized him, and he flung himself at the man and smote him between the eyes, and then, as he fell, seized him by the throat and began to pound his head upon the stones. The woman began screaming, and people came rushing in. The lantern had been upset and extinguished, and it was so dark they could not see a thing, but they could hear Jörgis panting and hear the thumping of his victim's skull, and they rushed there and tried to pull him off. Precisely as before, Jörgis came away with a piece of his enemy's flesh between his teeth, and, as before, he went on fighting with those who had interfered with him, until a policeman had come and beaten him into insensibility. And so Jörgis spent the balance of the night in the stockyard's station house. This time, however, he had money in his pocket, and when he came to his senses he could get something to drink, and also a messenger to take word of his flight to Bush Harper. Harper did not appear, however, until after the prisoner, feeling very weak and ill, had been hailed into court and remanded at five hundred dollars bail to await the result of his victim's injuries. Jörgis was wild about this because a different magistrate had a chance to be on the bench, and he had stated that he had never been arrested before, and also that he had been attacked first, and if only someone had been there to speak a good word for him he could have been let off at once. But Harper explained that he had been downtown, and had not got the message. What's happened to you, he asked. I've been doing a fellow up, said Jörgis, and I've got to get five hundred dollars bail. I can arrange that all right, said the other, though it may cost you a few dollars, of course, but what was the trouble? It was a man that did me a mean trick once, answered Jörgis. Who is he? He's a foreman in Browns, or used to be. His name's Connor, and the other gave a start. Connor, he cried, not Phil Connor. Yes, said Jörgis, that's the fellow, why? Good God, exclaimed the other. Then you're in for it, old man. I can't help you. Not helping? Why not? Why? He's one of Scully's biggest men. He's a member of the Warwoop League, and they talked of sending him to the legislature. Phil Connor, great heavens! Jörgis sat dumb with the smay. Why? He can send you to Joliet if he wants to, declared the other. Can't I have Scully get me off before he finds out about it? Asked Jörgis at length. It's Scully's out of town, the other answered. I don't even know where he is. He's run away to dodge the strike. That was a pretty mess indeed. Poor Jörgis sat half-dazed. His pole had run up against a bigger pole, and he was down and out. But what am I going to do? He asked weakly. How should I know? said the other. I shouldn't even dare to get bail for you. Why? I might ruin myself for life. Then there was silence. Can't you do it for me? Jörgis asked, and pretend that you didn't know who died hit. But what good would that do you when you came to stand trial, asked Harper. Then he sat buried in thought for a minute or two. There's nothing. Unless it's this, he said, I could have your bail reduced, and then if you had the money you could pay it and skip. How much will it be? Jörgis asked, after he had had this explained more in detail. I don't know, said the other. How much do you own? I've got about three hundred dollars, was the answer. Well, was Harper's reply. I'm not sure, but I'll try and get you off for that. I'll take the risk for friendship's sake, for I'd hate to see you sent to state's prison for a year or two. And so finally Jörgis ripped out his bankbook which was sewed up in his trousers and signed an order which Bush Harper wrote for all the money to be paid out. Then the latter went and got it and hurried to the court, and explained to the magistrate that Jörgis was a decent fellow and a friend of Scully's who had been attacked by a strikebreaker. So the bail was reduced to three hundred dollars, and Harper went on it himself. He did not tell us the Jörgis, however, nor did he tell him that when the time for trial came it would be an easy matter for him to avoid the forfeiting of the bail and pocket the three hundred dollars as his reward for the risk of offending Mike Scully. All that he told Jörgis was that he was now free, and that the best thing he could do was to clear out as quickly as possible. And so Jörgis, overwhelmed with gratitude and relief, took the dollar and fourteen cents that was left him out of all his bank account and put it with the two dollars and a quarter that was left from last night's celebration and boarded a streetcar and got off at the other end of Chicago. CHAPTER 27 Poor Jörgis was now an outcast and a tramp once more. He was crippled. He was as literally crippled as any wild animal which has lost its claws or been torn out of its shell. He had been shorn at one cut of all those mysterious weapons whereby he had been able to make a living easily and to escape the consequences of his actions. He could no longer command the job when he wanted it. He could no longer steal with impunity. He must take his chances with the common herd. Nay, worse! He dared not mingle with the herd. He must hide himself, for he was one marked out for destruction. His old companions would betray him for the sake of the influence they would gain thereby, and he would be made to suffer, not merely for the offense he had committed, but for others which would be laid at his door, just as had been done for some poor devil on the occasion of that assault upon the country customer by him and Dwayne. And also he labored under another handicap now. He had acquired new standards of living, which were not easily to be altered. When he had been out of work before, he had been content if he could sleep in a doorway or under a truck out of the rain, and if he could get fifteen cents a day for saloon lunches. But now he desired all sorts of other things, and suffered because he had to do without them. He must have a drink now and then, a drink for its own sake, and apart from the food that came with it. The craving for it was strong enough to master every other consideration. They would have it, though it were his last nickel, and he had to starve the balance of the day in consequence. Jorges became once more a besieger of factory gates, but never since he had been to Chicago had he stood less chance of getting a job than just then. For one thing there was the economic crisis, the million or two of men who had been out of work in the spring and summer, and were not yet all back by any means. And then there was the strike, with seventy thousand men and women all over the country idle for a couple of months, twenty thousand in Chicago, and many of them now seeking work throughout the city. It did not remedy matters that a few days later the strike was given up, and about half the strikers went back to work. For every one taken on there was a scab who gave up and fled. The ten or fifteen thousand green negroes, foreigners, and criminals were now being turned loose to shift for themselves. Everywhere Jorges went he kept meeting them, and he was in an agony of fear lest some of them should know that he was wanted. He would have left Chicago only by the time he had realized his danger he was almost penniless, and it would be better to go to jail than to be caught out in the country in the winter time. At the end of about ten days Jorges had only a few pennies left, and he had not yet found the job, not even a day's work at anything, not a chance to carry a satchel. Once again as when he had come out of the hospital he was bound hand and foot and facing the grisly phantom of starvation. Raw, naked terror possessed him, a maddening passion that would never leave him, and that wore him down more quickly than the actual want of food. He was going to die of hunger. The fiend reached out its scaly arms for him, it touched him, its breath came into his face, and he would cry out for the awfulness of it. He would wake up in the night, shuddering and bathed in perspiration and start up and flee. He would walk, begging for work, until he was exhausted. He could not remain still. He would wander on, gaunt and haggard, gazing about him with restless eyes. Everywhere he went, from one end of the vast city to the other. There were hundreds of others like him. There was the sight of Plenty and the merciless hand of authority waving them away. There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars and everything that he desires is outside. And there is another kind where the things are behind the bars and the man is outside. When he was down to his last quarter, Jörgis learned that before the bakeshops closed at night they sold out what was left at half price, and after that he would go and get two loaves of stale bread for a nickel and break them up and stuff his pockets with them, munching a bit from time to time. He would not spend the penny saved for this, and after two or three days more he even became sparing of the bread and would stop and peer into the ash barrels as he walked along the streets, and now and then rake out a bit of something, shake it free from dust, and count himself just so many minutes further from the end. So for several days he had been going about ravenous all the time and growing weaker and weaker, and then one morning he had a hideous experience that almost broke his heart. He was passing down a street lined with warehouses, and a boss offered him a job, and then, after he had started to work, turned him off because he was not strong enough. And he stood by and saw another man put into his place, and then picked up his coat and walked off doing all that he could to keep from breaking down and crying like a baby. He was lost, he was doomed, there was no hope for him. But then, with a sudden rush, his fear gave place to rage. He fell to cursing. He would come back there after dark, and he would show that scoundrel whether he was good for anything or not. He was still muttering this when suddenly, at the corner, he came upon a green grocery with a tray full of cabbages in front of it. Yorgos, after one swift glance about him, stooped and seized the biggest of them, and darted round the corner with it. There was a hue and cry, and a score of men and boys started in chase of him. But he came to an alley, and then to another branching off from it, and leading him into another street where he fell into a walk and slipped his cabbage under his coat, and went off unsuspected in the crowd. When he had gotten a safe distance away, he sat down and devoured half the cabbage raw, stowing the balance away in his pockets till the next day. Just about this time, one of the Chicago newspapers, which made much of the common people, opened a free soup kitchen for the benefit of the unemployed. Some people said that they did this for the sake of the advertising it gave them, and some others said that their motive was a fear lest all their readers should be starved off. But whatever the reason, the soup was thick and hot, and there was a bowl for every man all night long. When Yurgis heard of this from a fellow hobo, he vowed that he would have half a dozen bowls before morning. But as it proved, he was lucky to get one, for there was a line of men two blocks long before the stand, and there was just as long a line when the place was finally closed up. This depot was within the danger line for Yurgis in the Levy District, where he was known. But he went there all the same, for he was desperate and beginning to think of even the Bridewell as a place of refuge. So far the weather had been fair, and he had slept out every night in a vacant lot, but now there fell suddenly a shadow of the advancing winter, a chill wind from the north, and a driving storm of rain. That day Yurgis bought two drinks for the sake of the shelter, and at night he spent his last two pennies in a stale beer-dive. This was a place kept by Enigro, who went out and drew off the old dregs of beer that lay in barrels set outside of the saloons, and after he had doctored it with chemicals to make it fizz, he sold it for two cents a can. The purchase of a can, including the privilege of sleeping the night through upon the floor with a mass of degraded outcasts, men and women. All these horrors afflicted Yurgis all the more cruelly, because he was always contrasting them with the opportunities he had lost. For instance, just now it was election time again. Within five or six weeks the voters of the country would select a president, and he heard the wretches with whom he associated discussing it, and saw the streets of the city decorated with placards and banners, and what words could describe the pangs of grief and despair that shot through him. For instance, there was a night during this cold spell. He had begged all day for his very life, and found not a soul to heat him. Until toward evening he saw an old lady getting off a street car, and helped her down with her umbrellas and bundles, and then told her his hard-luck story. And after answering all her suspicious questions satisfactorily, was taken to a restaurant, and saw a quarter paid down for a meal. And so he had soup and bread, and boiled beef and potatoes and beans, and pie and coffee, and came out with his skin stuffed tight as a football, and then, through the rain and the darkness, far down the street, he saw red lights flaring and heard the thumping of a bass drum, and his heart gave a leap, and he made for the place on the run, knowing without the asking that it meant a political meeting. The campaign had so far been characterized by what the newspapers termed apathy. For some reason the people refused to get excited over the struggle, and it was almost impossible to get them to come to meetings or to make any noise when they did come. Those which had been held in Chicago so far had proved most dismal failures, and tonight the speaker being no less a personage than a candidate for the vice presidency of the nation, the political managers had been trembling with anxiety. But a merciful providence had sent this storm of cold rain, and now all it was necessary to do was to set off a few fireworks and thump a while on a drum, and all the homeless wretches from a mile around would pour in and fill the hall, and then on the morrow the newspapers would have a chance to report the tremendous ovation and to add that it had been no silk-stocking audience either, proving clearly that the high tarot sentiments of the distinguished candidate were pleasing to the wage earners of the nation. So Yurgis found himself in a large hall, elaborately decorated with flags and bunting, and after the chairman had made his little speech, and the orator of the evening rose up amid an uproar from the band, only fancy the emotions of Yurgis upon making the discovery that the personage was none other than the famous and eloquent Senator Speershanks, who had addressed the Doyle Republican Association at the stockyards, and helped to elect Mike Scully's ten-bin-setter to the Chicago horde of aldermen. In truth the sight of the senator almost brought tears into Yurgis' eyes, what agony it was to him to look back upon those golden hours when he too had a place beneath the shadow of the plum tree. When he too had been of the elect through whom the country is governed, when he had had a bung in the campaign barrel for his own. And this was another election in which the Republicans had all the money, and but for that one hideous accident he might have had a share of it instead of being where he was. The eloquent senator was explaining the system of protection, an ingenious device whereby the working man permitted the manufacturer to charge him higher prices in order that he might perceive higher wages, thus taking his money out of his pocket with one hand and putting a part of it back with the other. To the senator this unique arrangement had somehow become identified with the higher verities of the universe. It was because of it that Columbia was the gem of the ocean, and all her future triumphs, her power and her good repute among the nations depended upon the zeal and fidelity with which each citizen held up the hands of those who were toiling to maintain it. The name of this heroic company was the Grand Old Party, and here the band began to play, and Urgis sat up with a violent start. Singular as it may seem, Urgis was making a desperate effort to understand what the senator was saying, to comprehend the extent of American prosperity, the enormous expansion of American commerce, and the republic's future in the Pacific and in South America, and wherever else the oppressed were groaning. The reason for it was that he wanted to keep awake. He knew that if he allowed himself to fall asleep, he would begin to snore loudly, and so he must listen, he must be interested. But he had eaten such a big dinner, and he was so exhausted, and the hall was so warm, and his seat was so comfortable. The senator's gaunt form began to grow dim and hazy, to tower before him and dance about with figures of exports and imports. Once his neighbor gave him a savage poke in the ribs, and he sat up with a start and tried to look innocent, but then he was at it again, and men began to stare at him with annoyance and to call out in vexation. Finally one of them called a policeman, who came and grabbed Urgis by the collar and jerked him to his feet, bewildered and terrified. Some of the audience turned to see the commotion, and senator Sfershanks faltered in his speech. But a voice shouted cheerily, we're just firing a bum. Go ahead, old sport. And so the crowd roared, and the senator smiled genially and went on, and in a few seconds, poor Urgis found himself landed out in the rain with a kick and a string of curses. He got into the shelter of a doorway and took stock of himself. He was not heard, and he was not arrested, more than he had any right to expect. He swore at himself and his luck for a while and then turned his thoughts to practical manners. He had no money and no place to sleep. He must begin begging again. He went out, hunching his shoulders together and shivering at the touch of the icy rain. Coming down the street toward him was a lady, well dressed, and protected by an umbrella, and he turned and walked beside her. As ma'am, he began, could you lend me the price of a night's lodging? I'm a poor working man. Then suddenly he stopped short. By the light of a street lamp he had caught sight of the lady's face. He knew her. It was Elena Yesetite, who had been the belle of his wedding feast. Elena Yesetite, who had looked so beautiful and danced with such a queenly air, with usas, rachus. The teamster. Yurgis had only seen her once or twice afterward, where Yossas had thrown her over for another girl, and Elena had gone away from packing town. No one knew where, and now he met her here. She was as much surprised as he was. Yurgis rudkis, she guessed, and what in the world is the matter with you? I—I've had hard luck, he stammered. I'm out of work, and I've no home, and no money. And you, Elena? Are you married? No, she answered, I'm not married, but I've got a good place. They stood staring at each other for a few moments longer, and finally Elena spoke again. Yurgis, she said, I'd help you if I could, upon my word I would. But it happens that I've come out without my curse, and I honestly haven't a penny with me. I can do something far better for you, though. I can tell you how to get help. I can tell you where Maria is. Yurgis gave a start. Maria, he exclaimed, yes, said Elena, and she'll help you. She's got a place, and she's doing well. She'll be glad to see you. It was not much more than a year since Yurgis had left packing town, feeling like one escaped from jail. And it had been for Maria and Elzbita that he was escaping. But now, at the mere mention of them, his whole being cried out with joy. He wanted to see them. He wanted to go home. They would help him. They would be kind to him. In a flash he had thought over the situation. He had a good excuse for running away, his grief at the death of his son. And also he had a good excuse for not returning, the fact that they had left packing town. All right, he said. I'll go. So she gave him a number on Clark Street, adding, there's no need to give you my address, because Maria knows it. And Yurgis set out without further ado. He found a large brown stone house of aristocratic appearance and rang the basement bell. A young colored girl came to the door, opening it about an inch and gazing at him suspiciously. What do you want? She demanded. Does Maria Pachinska slip here? He inquired. I don't know, said the girl. What do you want with her? I want to see her, said he. She's a relative of mine. The girl hesitated a moment. Then she opened the door and said, come in. Yurgis came and stood in the hall, and she continued, I'll go see. What's your name? Tell her it's Yurgis, he answered, and the girl went upstairs. She came back at the end of a minute or two and replied, There ain't no such person here. Yurgis' heart went down into his boots. I was told this was where she lived, he cried. But the girl only shook her head. She laid he says there ain't no such person here, she said. And he stood for a moment, hesitating, helpless with dismay. Then he turned to go to the door. At the same instant, however, there came a knock upon it, and the girl went to open it. Yurgis heard the shuffling of feet, and then heard her give a cry, and the next moment she sprang back and passed him her eyes shining white with terror and bounded up the stairway, screaming at the top of her lungs, Police, police, we're pinched. Yurgis stood for a second, bewildered. Then seeing blue-coated forms rushing upon him, he sprang after the negris. Her cries had been the signal for a wild uproar above. The house was full of people, and as he entered the hallway, he saw them rushing hither and thither, and crying and screaming with alarm. There were men and women the latter clad for the most part in wrappers, the former in all stages of disabil. At one side Yurgis caught a glance of a big apartment with plush-covered chairs and tables covered with trays and glasses. There were playing-cards scattered all over the floor. One of the tables had been upset, and bottles of wine were rolling about, their contents running out upon the carpet. There was a young girl who had fainted and two men who were supporting her, and there were a dozen others crowding toward the front door. Suddenly, however, there came a series of resounding blows upon it, causing the crowd to give back. At the same instant, a stout woman with painted cheeks and diamonds in her ears came running down the stairs, panting breathlessly, to the rear, quick. She led the way to a back staircase Yurgis following. In the kitchen she pressed a spring, and a cupboard gave way and opened, disclosing a dark passage. Go in, she cried to the crowd, which now amounted to twenty or thirty, and they began to pass through. Scarcely had the last one disappeared, however, before there were cries from in front, and then the panic-stricken throng poured out again, exclaiming, They're there too, we're trapped. Upstairs cried the woman, and there was another rush of the mob. Women and men cursing and screaming and fighting to be first. One flight, two, three, and then there was a ladder to the roof, with a crowd packed at the foot of it, and one man at the top, straining and struggling to lift the trapdoor. It was not to be stirred, however, and when the woman shouted up to unhook it, he answered, It's already unhooked. There's somebody sitting on it. And a moment later came a voice from downstairs. You might as well quit, you people. We mean business this time. So the crowd subsided, and a few moments later several policemen came up, staring here and there, and leering at their victims. Of the ladder the men were for the most part frightened and sheepish looking. The women took it as a joke, as if they were used to it, though if they had been pale one could not have told for the paint on their cheeks. One black-eyed young girl perched herself upon the top of the balustrade and began to kick with her slipper foot at the helmets of the policeman, until one of them caught her by the ankle and pulled her down. On the floor below four or five other girls sat upon trunks in the hall, making fun of the procession which filed by them. They were noisy and hilarious and had evidently been drinking. One of them, who wore a bright red kimono, shouted and screamed in a voice that drowned out all the other sounds in the hall. A Yurgis took a glance at her and then gave a start and a cry. Maria! She heard him and glanced around. Then she shrank back and half sprang to her feet in amazement. Yurgis! She gasped. For a second or two they stood staring at each other. How did you come to be here? Maria exclaimed. I came to see you, he answered. When? Just now. But how did you know? Who told you I was here? Elena Yesetite, I met her on the street. Again there was a silence while they gazed at each other. The rest of the crowd was watching them and so Maria got up and came closer to him. And you, Yurgis asked, you live here? Yes, said Maria, I live here. Then suddenly came a hail from below. Get your clothes on now, girls, and come along. You'd best begin, or you'll be sorry. It's raining outside. Brrr, shivered someone, and the women got up and entered the various doors which lined the hallway. Come, said Maria, and took Yurgis into her room, which was a tiny place about eight by six, with a cot and a chair and a dressing stand and some dresses hanging behind the door. There were clothes scattered about on the floor and hopeless confusion everywhere, boxes of rouge and bottles of perfume mixed with hats and soiled dishes on the dresser, and a pair of slippers and a clock and a whiskey bottle on a chair. Maria had nothing on but a kimono and a pair of stockings, yet she proceeded to dress before Yurgis and without even taking the trouble to close the door. He had by this time divined what sort of place he was in, and he had seen a great deal of the world since he had left home and was not easy to shock, and yet it gave him a painful start that Maria should do this. They had always been decent people at home, and it seemed to him that the memory of old times ought to have ruled her. But then he laughed at himself for a pool. What was he to be pretending to decency? How long have you been living here, he asked. Nearly a year, she answered. Why did you come? I had to live, she said, and I couldn't see the children's star. He paused for a moment, watching her. You were out of work, he asked, finally. I got sick, she replied, and after that I had no money. And then Stanislavis died. Stanislavis dead? Yes, said Norya, I forgot, you didn't know about that. How did he die? Rats killed him, she answered. Yurgis gave a gas. Rats killed him? Yes, said the other. She was bending over, lacing her shoes as she spoke. He was working in an oil factory. At least he was hired by the men to get their beer. He used to carry cans on a long pole, and he drank a little out of each can. And one day he drank too much, and fell asleep in a corner, and got locked up in the place all night. When they found him, the rats had killed him, and eaten him nearly all up. Yurgis sat, frozen with horror. Norya went on, lacing up her shoes. There was a long silence. Suddenly a big policeman came to the door. He up there, he said. As quick as I can, said Norya, and she stood up and began putting on her corsets with feverish haste. Are the rest of the people alive? asked Yurgis, finally. Yes, she said. Where are they? They live not far from here. They're all right now. They are working, he inquired. Elzbita is, said Norya, when she can. I take care of them most of the time. I'm making plenty of money now. Yurgis was silent for a moment. Do they know you live here? How you live? he asked. Elzbita knows, answered Norya. I couldn't lie to her. And maybe the children have found out by this time. It's nothing to be ashamed of. We can't help it. And Tomosius, he asked. Does he know? Norya shrugged her shoulders. How do I know, she said. I haven't seen him for over a year. He got blood poisoning and lost one finger and couldn't play the violin anymore. And then he went away. Norya was standing in front of the glass, fastening her dress. Yurgis sat staring at her. He could hardly believe that she was the same woman he had known in the old days. She was so quiet, so hard. It struck peer to his heart to watch her. Then suddenly she gave a glance at him. You looked as if you had been having a rough time of it yourself, she said. I have, he answered. I have an ascent in my pockets and nothing to do. Where have you been? All over. I've been hoboing it. Then I went back to the yards, just before the strike. He paused for a moment, hesitating. I asked for you, he added. I found you had gone away. No one knew where. Perhaps you think I did you a dirty trick, running away as I did, Norya. No, she answered. I don't blame you. We never have any of us. You did your best. The job was too much for us. She paused for a moment, then added. We were too ignorant. That was the trouble. We didn't stand any chance. If I'd known what I know now, we'd have won out. You'd have come here, said Yurgis. Yes, she answered. But that's not what I meant. I meant you, how differently you would have behaved, about Ona. Yurgis was silent. He had never thought of that aspect of it. When people are starving, the other continued, and they have anything with a price, they ought to sell it, I say. I guess you realize it now when it's too late. Norya could have taken care of us all in the beginning. Maria spoke without emotion, as one who had come to regard things from the business point of view. I—yes, I guess so, Yurgis answered hesitatingly. He did not add that he had paid three hundred dollars and a foreman's job for the satisfaction of knocking down Phil Connor a second time. The policeman came to the door again just then. Come on now, he said, lively. All right, said Maria, reaching for her hat, which was big enough to be a drum-majors, and full of ostrich feathers. She went out into the hall, and Yurgis followed. The policeman remaining to look under the bed and behind the door. What's going to come of this, Yurgis asked, as they started down the steps. The raid you mean? Oh, nothing. It happens to us every now and then. The madams having some sort of time with the police. I don't know what it is, but maybe they'll come to terms before morning. Anyhow, they won't do anything to you. They always let the men off. Maybe so, he responded. But not me. I'm afraid I'm in for it. How do you mean? I'm wanted by the police, he said, lowering his voice, though of course their conversation was in Lithuania. They'll send me up for a year or two, I'm afraid. Hell, said Maria. That's too bad. I'll see if I can't get you off. Downstairs where the greater part of the prisoners were now massed, she sought out the stout personage with the diamond earrings, and had a few whispered words with her. The latter then approached the police sergeant who was in charge of the raid. Billy, she said, pointing to Yurgis, there's a fellow who came in to see his sister. He's just got in the door when you knocked. You aren't taking hobos, are you? The sergeant laughed as he looked at Yurgis. Sorry, he said, but the orders are everyone but the servants. So Yurgis slunk in among the rest of the men, who kept dodging behind each other like sheep that have smelled a wolf. There were old men and young men, college boys and graybeards old enough to be their grandfathers. Some of them wore evening dresses. There was no one among them saved Yurgis who showed any signs of poverty. When the roundup was completed, the doors were opened and the party marched out. Three patrol wagons were drawn up at the curb, and the whole neighborhood had turned out to see the sport. There was much shaping and a universal craning of necks. The women stared about them with defiant eyes, or laughed and joked while the men kept their heads bowed and their hats pulled over their faces. They were crowded into the patrol wagons as if into streetcars, and then off they went amid a din of cheers. At the station house Yurgis gave a Polish name and was put into a cell with half a dozen others, and while these sat and talked in whispers he lay down in a corner and gave himself up to his thoughts. Yurgis had looked into the deepest reaches of the social pit and grown used to the sights in them. Yet when he had thought of all humanity as vile and hideous, he had somehow, always accepted his own family that he had loved, and now this sudden horrible discovery, Maria, a whore, and Elzbeta and the children living off her shame. Yurgis might argue with himself all he chose that he had done worse and was a fool for caring, but still he could not get over the shock of that sudden unveiling. He could not help being sunk in grief because of it. The depths of him were troubled and shaken, memories were stirred in him that had been sleeping so long he had counted them dead, memories of the old life, his old hopes and his old yearnings, his old dreams of decency and independence. He saw Ona again, he heard her gentle voice pleading with him. He saw little Antonos, whom he had meant to make a man. He saw his trembling old father, who had blessed them all with his wonderful love. He lived again through that day of horror when he discovered Ona's shame. Not how he had suffered, what a madman he had been. How dreadful it had all seemed to him. And now today he had sat and listened, and half agreed when Maria told him he had been a fool. Yes, told him that he ought to have sold his wife's honor and lived by it. And then there was Stanislawus and his awful fate, that brief story which Maria had narrated so calmly and with such dull indifference. The poor little fellow with his frostbitten fingers and his terror of the snow, his wailing voice rang in Yorgos ears as he lay there in the darkness until the sweat started on his forehead. Now and then he would quiver with a sudden spasm of horror at the picture of little Stanislawus shut up in the deserted building and fighting for his life with the rats. All these emotions had become strangers to the soul of Yorgos. It was so long since they had troubled him that he had ceased to think they might ever trouble him again. Helpless, trapped as he was, what good did they do him? Why should he ever have allowed them to torment him? It had been the task of his recent life to fight them down, to crush them out of him. Never in his life would he have suffered from them again, save that they had caught him unawares and overwhelmed him before he could protect himself. He heard the old voices of his soul, and he saw its old ghosts beckoning to him, stretching out their arms to him. But they were far off and shadowy, and the gulf between them was black and bottomless. They would fade away into the mists of the past once more. Their voices would die, and never again would he hear them, and so the last faint spark of manhood in his soul would flicker out.