The Jungle

uring the early part of the winter the family had had money enough to
live and a little over to pay their debts with; but when the earnings
of Jurgis fell from nine or ten dollars a week to five or six, there
was no longer anything to spare. The winter went, and the spring came,
and found them still living thus from hand to mouth, hanging on day by
day, with literally not a month’s wages between them and starvation.
Marija was in despair, for there was still no word about the reopening
of the canning factory, and her savings were almost entirely gone. She
had had to give up all idea of marrying then; the family could not get
along without her—though for that matter she was likely soon to become
a burden even upon them, for when her money was all gone, they would
have to pay back what they owed her in board. So Jurgis and Ona and
Teta Elzbieta would hold anxious conferences until late at night,
trying to figure how they could manage this too without starving.

Such were the cruel terms upon which their life was possible, that they
might never have nor expect a single instant’s respite from worry, a
single instant in which they were not haunted by the thought of money.
They would no sooner escape, as by a miracle, from one difficulty, than
a new one would come into view. In addition to all their physical
hardships, there was thus a constant strain upon their minds; they were
harried all day and nearly all night by worry and fear. This was in
truth not living; it was scarcely even existing, and they felt that it
was too little for the price they paid. They were willing to work all
the time; and when people did their best, ought they not to be able to
keep alive?

There seemed never to be an end to the things they had to buy and to
the unforeseen contingencies. Once their water pipes froze and burst;
and when, in their ignorance, they thawed them out, they had a
terrifying flood in their house. It happened while the men were away,
and poor Elzbieta rushed out into the street screaming for help, for
she did not even know whether the flood could be stopped, or whether
they were ruined for life. It was nearly as bad as the latter, they
found in the end, for the plumber charged them seventy-five cents an
hour, and seventy-five cents for another man who had stood and watched
him, and included all the time the two had been going and coming, and
also a charge for all sorts of material and extras. And then again,
when they went to pay their January’s installment on the house, the
agent terrified them by asking them if they had had the insurance
attended to yet. In answer to their inquiry he showed them a clause in
the deed which provided that they were to keep the house insured for
one thousand dollars, as soon as the present policy ran out, which
would happen in a few days. Poor Elzbieta, upon whom again fell the
blow, demanded how much it would cost them. Seven dollars, the man
said; and that night came Jurgis, grim and determined, requesting that
the agent would be good enough to inform him, once for all, as to all
the expenses they were liable for. The deed was signed now, he said,
with sarcasm proper to the new way of life he had learned—the deed was
signed, and so the agent had no longer anything to gain by keeping
quiet. And Jurgis looked the fellow squarely in the eye, and so the
fellow wasted no time in conventional protests, but read him the deed.
They would have to renew the insurance every year; they would have to
pay the taxes, about ten dollars a year; they would have to pay the
water tax, about six dollars a year—(Jurgis silently resolved to shut
off the hydrant). This, besides the interest and the monthly
installments, would be all—unless by chance the city should happen to
decide to put in a sewer or to lay a sidewalk. Yes, said the agent,
they would have to have these, whether they wanted them or not, if the
city said so. The sewer would cost them about twenty-two dollars, and
the sidewalk fifteen if it were wood, twenty-five if it were cement.

So Jurgis went home again; it was a relief to know the worst, at any
rate, so that he could no more be surprised by fresh demands. He saw
now how they had been plundered; but they were in for it, there was no
turning back. They could only go on and make the fight and win—for
defeat was a thing that could not even be thought of.

When the springtime came, they were delivered from the dreadful cold,
and that was a great deal; but in addition they had counted on the
money they would not have to pay for coal—and it was just at this time
that Marija’s board began to fail. Then, too, the warm weather brought
trials of its own; each season had its trials, as they found. In the
spring there were cold rains, that turned the streets into canals and
bogs; the mud would be so deep that wagons would sink up to the hubs,
so that half a dozen horses could not move them. Then, of course, it
was impossible for any one to get to work with dry feet; and this was
bad for men that were poorly clad and shod, and still worse for women
and children. Later came midsummer, with the stifling heat, when the
dingy killing beds of Durham’s became a very purgatory; one time, in a
single day, three men fell dead from sunstroke. All day long the rivers
of hot blood poured forth, until, with the sun beating down, and the
air motionless, the stench was enough to knock a man over; all the old
smells of a generation would be drawn out by this heat—for there was
never any washing of the walls and rafters and pillars, and they were
caked with the filth of a lifetime. The men who worked on the killing
beds would come to reek with foulness, so that you could smell one of
them fifty feet away; there was simply no such thing as keeping decent,
the most careful man gave it up in the end, and wallowed in
uncleanness. There was not even a place where a man could wash his
hands, and the men ate as much raw blood as food at dinnertime. When
they were at work they could not even wipe off their faces—they were as
helpless as newly born babes in that respect; and it may seem like a
small matter, but when the sweat began to run down their necks and
tickle them, or a fly to bother them, it was a torture like being
burned alive. Whether it was the slaughterhouses or the dumps that were
responsible, one could not say, but with the hot weather there
descended upon Packingtown a veritable Egyptian plague of flies; there
could be no describing this—the houses would be black with them. There
was no escaping; you might provide all your doors and windows with
screens, but their buzzing outside would be like the swarming of bees,
and whenever you opened the door they would rush in as if a storm of
wind were driving them.

Perhaps the summertime suggests to you thoughts of the country, visions
of green fields and mountains and sparkling lakes. It had no such
suggestion for the people in the yards. The great packing machine
ground on remorselessly, without thinking of green fields; and the men
and women and children who were part of it never saw any green thing,
not even a flower. Four or five miles to the east of them lay the blue
waters of Lake Michigan; but for all the good it did them it might have
been as far away as the Pacific Ocean. They had only Sundays, and then
they were too tired to walk. They were tied to the great packing
machine, and tied to it for life. The managers and superintendents and
clerks of Packingtown were all recruited from another class, and never
from the workers; they scorned the workers, the very meanest of them. A
poor devil of a bookkeeper who had been working in Durham’s for twenty
years at a salary of six dollars a week, and might work there for
twenty more and do no better, would yet consider himself a gentleman,
as far removed as the poles from the most skilled worker on the killing
beds; he would dress differently, and live in another part of the town,
and come to work at a different hour of the day, and in every way make
sure that he never rubbed elbows with a laboring man. Perhaps this was
due to the repulsiveness of the work; at any rate, the people who
worked with their hands were a class apart, and were made to feel it.

In the late spring the canning factory started up again, and so once
more Marija was heard to sing, and the love-music of Tamoszius took on
a less melancholy tone. It was not for long, however; for a month or
two later a dreadful calamity fell upon Marija. Just one year and three
days after she had begun work as a can-painter, she lost her job.

It was a long story. Marija insisted that it was because of her
activity in the union. The packers, of course, had spies in all the
unions, and in addition they made a practice of buying up a certain
number of the union officials, as many as they thought they needed. So
every week they received reports as to what was going on, and often
they knew things before the members of the union knew them. Any one who
was considered to be dangerous by them would find that he was not a
favorite with his boss; and Marija had been a great hand for going
after the foreign people and preaching to them. However that might be,
the known facts were that a few weeks before the factory closed, Marija
had been cheated out of her pay for three hundred cans. The girls
worked at a long table, and behind them walked a woman with pencil and
notebook, keeping count of the number they finished. This woman was, of
course, only human, and sometimes made mistakes; when this happened,
there was no redress—if on Saturday you got less money than you had
earned, you had to make the best of it. But Marija did not understand
this, and made a disturbance. Marija’s disturbances did not mean
anything, and while she had known only Lithuanian and Polish, they had
done no harm, for people only laughed at her and made her cry. But now
Marija was able to call names in English, and so she got the woman who
made the mistake to disliking her. Probably, as Marija claimed, she
made mistakes on purpose after that; at any rate, she made them, and
the third time it happened Marija went on the warpath and took the
matter first to the forelady, and when she got no satisfaction there,
to the superintendent. This was unheard-of presumption, but the
superintendent said he would see about it, which Marija took to mean
that she was going to get her money; after waiting three days, she went
to see the superintendent again. This time the man frowned, and said
that he had not had time to attend to it; and when Marija, against the
advice and warning of every one, tried it once more, he ordered her
back to her work in a passion. Just how things happened after that
Marija was not sure, but that afternoon the forelady told her that her
services would not be any longer required. Poor Marija could not have
been more dumfounded had the woman knocked her over the head; at first
she could not believe what she heard, and then she grew furious and
swore that she would come anyway, that her place belonged to her. In
the end she sat down in the middle of the floor and wept and wailed.

It was a cruel lesson; but then Marija was headstrong—she should have
listened to those who had had experience. The next time she would know
her place, as the forelady expressed it; and so Marija went out, and
the family faced the problem of an existence again.

It was especially hard this time, for Ona was to be confined before
long, and Jurgis was trying hard to save up money for this. He had
heard dreadful stories of the midwives, who grow as thick as fleas in
Packingtown; and he had made up his mind that Ona must have a
man-doctor. Jurgis could be very obstinate when he wanted to, and he
was in this case, much to the dismay of the women, who felt that a
man-doctor was an impropriety, and that the matter really belonged to
them. The cheapest doctor they could find would charge them fifteen
dollars, and perhaps more when the bill came in; and here was Jurgis,
declaring that he would pay it, even if he had to stop eating in the
meantime!

Marija had only about twenty-five dollars left. Day after day she
wandered about the yards begging a job, but this time without hope of
finding it. Marija could do the work of an able-bodied man, when she
was cheerful, but discouragement wore her out easily, and she would
come home at night a pitiable object. She learned her lesson this time,
poor creature; she learned it ten times over. All the family learned it
along with her—that when you have once got a job in Packingtown, you
hang on to it, come what will.

Four weeks Marija hunted, and half of a fifth week. Of course she
stopped paying her dues to the union. She lost all interest in the
union, and cursed herself for a fool that she had ever been dragged
into one. She had about made up her mind that she was a lost soul, when
somebody told her of an opening, and she went and got a place as a
“beef-trimmer.” She got this because the boss saw that she had the
muscles of a man, and so he discharged a man and put Marija to do his
work, paying her a little more than half what he had been paying
before.

When she first came to Packingtown, Marija would have scorned such work
as this. She was in another canning factory, and her work was to trim
the meat of those diseased cattle that Jurgis had been told about not
long before. She was shut up in one of the rooms where the people
seldom saw the daylight; beneath her were the chilling rooms, where the
meat was frozen, and above her were the cooking rooms; and so she stood
on an ice-cold floor, while her head was often so hot that she could
scarcely breathe. Trimming beef off the bones by the hundred-weight,
while standing up from early morning till late at night, with heavy
boots on and the floor always damp and full of puddles, liable to be
thrown out of work indefinitely because of a slackening in the trade,
liable again to be kept overtime in rush seasons, and be worked till
she trembled in every nerve and lost her grip on her slimy knife, and
gave herself a poisoned wound—that was the new life that unfolded
itself before Marija. But because Marija was a human horse she merely
laughed and went at it; it would enable her to pay her board again, and
keep the family going. And as for Tamoszius—well, they had waited a
long time, and they could wait a little longer. They could not possibly
get along upon his wages alone, and the family could not live without
hers. He could come and visit her, and sit in the kitchen and hold her
hand, and he must manage to be content with that. But day by day the
music of Tamoszius’ violin became more passionate and heartbreaking;
and Marija would sit with her hands clasped and her cheeks wet and all
her body a-tremble, hearing in the wailing melodies the voices of the
unborn generations which cried out in her for life.

Marija’s lesson came just in time to save Ona from a similar fate. Ona,
too, was dissatisfied with her place, and had far more reason than
Marija. She did not tell half of her story at home, because she saw it
was a torment to Jurgis, and she was afraid of what he might do. For a
long time Ona had seen that Miss Henderson, the forelady in her
department, did not like her. At first she thought it was the old-time
mistake she had made in asking for a holiday to get married. Then she
concluded it must be because she did not give the forelady a present
occasionally—she was the kind that took presents from the girls, Ona
learned, and made all sorts of discriminations in favor of those who
gave them. In the end, however, Ona discovered that it was even worse
than that. Miss Henderson was a newcomer, and it was some time before
rumor made her out; but finally it transpired that she was a kept
woman, the former mistress of the superintendent of a department in the
same building. He had put her there to keep her quiet, it seemed—and
that not altogether with success, for once or twice they had been heard
quarreling. She had the temper of a hyena, and soon the place she ran
was a witch’s caldron. There were some of the girls who were of her own
sort, who were willing to toady to her and flatter her; and these would
carry tales about the rest, and so the furies were unchained in the
place. Worse than this, the woman lived in a bawdy-house downtown, with
a coarse, red-faced Irishman named Connor, who was the boss of the
loading-gang outside, and would make free with the girls as they went
to and from their work. In the slack seasons some of them would go with
Miss Henderson to this house downtown—in fact, it would not be too much
to say that she managed her department at Brown’s in conjunction with
it. Sometimes women from the house would be given places alongside of
decent girls, and after other decent girls had been turned off to make
room for them. When you worked in this woman’s department the house
downtown was never out of your thoughts all day—there were always
whiffs of it to be caught, like the odor of the Packingtown rendering
plants at night, when the wind shifted suddenly. There would be stories
about it going the rounds; the girls opposite you would be telling them
and winking at you. In such a place Ona would not have stayed a day,
but for starvation; and, as it was, she was never sure that she could
stay the next day. She understood now that the real reason that Miss
Henderson hated her was that she was a decent married girl; and she
knew that the talebearers and the toadies hated her for the same
reason, and were doing their best to make her life miserable.

But there was no place a girl could go in Packingtown, if she was
particular about things of this sort; there was no place in it where a
prostitute could not get along better than a decent girl. Here was a
population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge
of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the
whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave
drivers; under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable,
and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery. Things
that were quite unspeakable went on there in the packing houses all the
time, and were taken for granted by everybody; only they did not show,
as in the old slavery times, because there was no difference in color
between master and slave.

One morning Ona stayed home, and Jurgis had the man-doctor, according
to his whim, and she was safely delivered of a fine baby. It was an
enormous big boy, and Ona was such a tiny creature herself, that it
seemed quite incredible. Jurgis would stand and gaze at the stranger by
the hour, unable to believe that it had really happened.

The coming of this boy was a decisive event with Jurgis. It made him
irrevocably a family man; it killed the last lingering impulse that he
might have had to go out in the evenings and sit and talk with the men
in the saloons. There was nothing he cared for now so much as to sit
and look at the baby. This was very curious, for Jurgis had never been
interested in babies before. But then, this was a very unusual sort of
a baby. He had the brightest little black eyes, and little black
ringlets all over his head; he was the living image of his father,
everybody said—and Jurgis found this a fascinating circumstance. It was
sufficiently perplexing that this tiny mite of life should have come
into the world at all in the manner that it had; that it should have
come with a comical imitation of its father’s nose was simply uncanny.

Perhaps, Jurgis thought, this was intended to signify that it was his
baby; that it was his and Ona’s, to care for all its life. Jurgis had
never possessed anything nearly so interesting—a baby was, when you
came to think about it, assuredly a marvelous possession. It would grow
up to be a man, a human soul, with a personality all its own, a will of
its own! Such thoughts would keep haunting Jurgis, filling him with all
sorts of strange and almost painful excitements. He was wonderfully
proud of little Antanas; he was curious about all the details of
him—the washing and the dressing and the eating and the sleeping of
him, and asked all sorts of absurd questions. It took him quite a while
to get over his alarm at the incredible shortness of the little
creature’s legs.

Jurgis had, alas, very little time to see his baby; he never felt the
chains about him more than just then. When he came home at night, the
baby would be asleep, and it would be the merest chance if he awoke
before Jurgis had to go to sleep himself. Then in the morning there was
no time to look at him, so really the only chance the father had was on
Sundays. This was more cruel yet for Ona, who ought to have stayed home
and nursed him, the doctor said, for her own health as well as the
baby’s; but Ona had to go to work, and leave him for Teta Elzbieta to
feed upon the pale blue poison that was called milk at the corner
grocery. Ona’s confinement lost her only a week’s wages—she would go to
the factory the second Monday, and the best that Jurgis could persuade
her was to ride in the car, and let him run along behind and help her
to Brown’s when she alighted. After that it would be all right, said
Ona, it was no strain sitting still sewing hams all day; and if she
waited longer she might find that her dreadful forelady had put some
one else in her place. That would be a greater calamity than ever now,
Ona continued, on account of the baby. They would all have to work
harder now on his account. It was such a responsibility—they must not
have the baby grow up to suffer as they had. And this indeed had been
the first thing that Jurgis had thought of himself—he had clenched his
hands and braced himself anew for the struggle, for the sake of that
tiny mite of human possibility.

And so Ona went back to Brown’s and saved her place and a week’s wages;
and so she gave herself some one of the thousand ailments that women
group under the title of “womb trouble,” and was never again a well
person as long as she lived. It is difficult to convey in words all
that this meant to Ona; it seemed such a slight offense, and the
punishment was so out of all proportion, that neither she nor any one
else ever connected the two. “Womb trouble” to Ona did not mean a
specialist’s diagnosis, and a course of treatment, and perhaps an
operation or two; it meant simply headaches and pains in the back, and
depression and heartsickness, and neuralgia when she had to go to work
in the rain. The great majority of the women who worked in Packingtown
suffered in the same way, and from the same cause, so it was not deemed
a thing to see the doctor about; instead Ona would try patent
medicines, one after another, as her friends told her about them. As
these all contained alcohol, or some other stimulant, she found that
they all did her good while she took them; and so she was always
chasing the phantom of good health, and losing it because she was too
poor to continue.