The Jungle

or three weeks after his injury Jurgis never got up from bed. It was a
very obstinate sprain; the swelling would not go down, and the pain
still continued. At the end of that time, however, he could contain
himself no longer, and began trying to walk a little every day,
laboring to persuade himself that he was better. No arguments could
stop him, and three or four days later he declared that he was going
back to work. He limped to the cars and got to Brown’s, where he found
that the boss had kept his place—that is, was willing to turn out into
the snow the poor devil he had hired in the meantime. Every now and
then the pain would force Jurgis to stop work, but he stuck it out till
nearly an hour before closing. Then he was forced to acknowledge that
he could not go on without fainting; it almost broke his heart to do
it, and he stood leaning against a pillar and weeping like a child. Two
of the men had to help him to the car, and when he got out he had to
sit down and wait in the snow till some one came along.

So they put him to bed again, and sent for the doctor, as they ought to
have done in the beginning. It transpired that he had twisted a tendon
out of place, and could never have gotten well without attention. Then
he gripped the sides of the bed, and shut his teeth together, and
turned white with agony, while the doctor pulled and wrenched away at
his swollen ankle. When finally the doctor left, he told him that he
would have to lie quiet for two months, and that if he went to work
before that time he might lame himself for life.

Three days later there came another heavy snowstorm, and Jonas and
Marija and Ona and little Stanislovas all set out together, an hour
before daybreak, to try to get to the yards. About noon the last two
came back, the boy screaming with pain. His fingers were all frosted,
it seemed. They had had to give up trying to get to the yards, and had
nearly perished in a drift. All that they knew how to do was to hold
the frozen fingers near the fire, and so little Stanislovas spent most
of the day dancing about in horrible agony, till Jurgis flew into a
passion of nervous rage and swore like a madman, declaring that he
would kill him if he did not stop. All that day and night the family
was half-crazed with fear that Ona and the boy had lost their places;
and in the morning they set out earlier than ever, after the little
fellow had been beaten with a stick by Jurgis. There could be no
trifling in a case like this, it was a matter of life and death; little
Stanislovas could not be expected to realize that he might a great deal
better freeze in the snowdrift than lose his job at the lard machine.
Ona was quite certain that she would find her place gone, and was all
unnerved when she finally got to Brown’s, and found that the forelady
herself had failed to come, and was therefore compelled to be lenient.

One of the consequences of this episode was that the first joints of
three of the little boy’s fingers were permanently disabled, and
another that thereafter he always had to be beaten before he set out to
work, whenever there was fresh snow on the ground. Jurgis was called
upon to do the beating, and as it hurt his foot he did it with a
vengeance; but it did not tend to add to the sweetness of his temper.
They say that the best dog will turn cross if he be kept chained all
the time, and it was the same with the man; he had not a thing to do
all day but lie and curse his fate, and the time came when he wanted to
curse everything.

This was never for very long, however, for when Ona began to cry,
Jurgis could not stay angry. The poor fellow looked like a homeless
ghost, with his cheeks sunken in and his long black hair straggling
into his eyes; he was too discouraged to cut it, or to think about his
appearance. His muscles were wasting away, and what were left were soft
and flabby. He had no appetite, and they could not afford to tempt him
with delicacies. It was better, he said, that he should not eat, it was
a saving. About the end of March he had got hold of Ona’s bankbook, and
learned that there was only three dollars left to them in the world.

But perhaps the worst of the consequences of this long siege was that
they lost another member of their family; Brother Jonas disappeared.
One Saturday night he did not come home, and thereafter all their
efforts to get trace of him were futile. It was said by the boss at
Durham’s that he had gotten his week’s money and left there. That might
not be true, of course, for sometimes they would say that when a man
had been killed; it was the easiest way out of it for all concerned.
When, for instance, a man had fallen into one of the rendering tanks
and had been made into pure leaf lard and peerless fertilizer, there
was no use letting the fact out and making his family unhappy. More
probable, however, was the theory that Jonas had deserted them, and
gone on the road, seeking happiness. He had been discontented for a
long time, and not without some cause. He paid good board, and was yet
obliged to live in a family where nobody had enough to eat. And Marija
would keep giving them all her money, and of course he could not but
feel that he was called upon to do the same. Then there were crying
brats, and all sorts of misery; a man would have had to be a good deal
of a hero to stand it all without grumbling, and Jonas was not in the
least a hero—he was simply a weatherbeaten old fellow who liked to have
a good supper and sit in the corner by the fire and smoke his pipe in
peace before he went to bed. Here there was not room by the fire, and
through the winter the kitchen had seldom been warm enough for comfort.
So, with the springtime, what was more likely than that the wild idea
of escaping had come to him? Two years he had been yoked like a horse
to a half-ton truck in Durham’s dark cellars, with never a rest, save
on Sundays and four holidays in the year, and with never a word of
thanks—only kicks and blows and curses, such as no decent dog would
have stood. And now the winter was over, and the spring winds were
blowing—and with a day’s walk a man might put the smoke of Packingtown
behind him forever, and be where the grass was green and the flowers
all the colors of the rainbow!

But now the income of the family was cut down more than one-third, and
the food demand was cut only one-eleventh, so that they were worse off
than ever. Also they were borrowing money from Marija, and eating up
her bank account, and spoiling once again her hopes of marriage and
happiness. And they were even going into debt to Tamoszius Kuszleika
and letting him impoverish himself. Poor Tamoszius was a man without
any relatives, and with a wonderful talent besides, and he ought to
have made money and prospered; but he had fallen in love, and so given
hostages to fortune, and was doomed to be dragged down too.

So it was finally decided that two more of the children would have to
leave school. Next to Stanislovas, who was now fifteen, there was a
girl, little Kotrina, who was two years younger, and then two boys,
Vilimas, who was eleven, and Nikalojus, who was ten. Both of these last
were bright boys, and there was no reason why their family should
starve when tens of thousands of children no older were earning their
own livings. So one morning they were given a quarter apiece and a roll
with a sausage in it, and, with their minds top-heavy with good advice,
were sent out to make their way to the city and learn to sell
newspapers. They came back late at night in tears, having walked for
the five or six miles to report that a man had offered to take them to
a place where they sold newspapers, and had taken their money and gone
into a store to get them, and nevermore been seen. So they both
received a whipping, and the next morning set out again. This time they
found the newspaper place, and procured their stock; and after
wandering about till nearly noontime, saying “Paper?” to every one they
saw, they had all their stock taken away and received a thrashing
besides from a big newsman upon whose territory they had trespassed.
Fortunately, however, they had already sold some papers, and came back
with nearly as much as they started with.

After a week of mishaps such as these, the two little fellows began to
learn the ways of the trade—the names of the different papers, and how
many of each to get, and what sort of people to offer them to, and
where to go and where to stay away from. After this, leaving home at
four o’clock in the morning, and running about the streets, first with
morning papers and then with evening, they might come home late at
night with twenty or thirty cents apiece—possibly as much as forty
cents. From this they had to deduct their carfare, since the distance
was so great; but after a while they made friends, and learned still
more, and then they would save their carfare. They would get on a car
when the conductor was not looking, and hide in the crowd; and three
times out of four he would not ask for their fares, either not seeing
them, or thinking they had already paid; or if he did ask, they would
hunt through their pockets, and then begin to cry, and either have
their fares paid by some kind old lady, or else try the trick again on
a new car. All this was fair play, they felt. Whose fault was it that
at the hours when workingmen were going to their work and back, the
cars were so crowded that the conductors could not collect all the
fares? And besides, the companies were thieves, people said—had stolen
all their franchises with the help of scoundrelly politicians!

Now that the winter was by, and there was no more danger of snow, and
no more coal to buy, and another room warm enough to put the children
into when they cried, and enough money to get along from week to week
with, Jurgis was less terrible than he had been. A man can get used to
anything in the course of time, and Jurgis had gotten used to lying
about the house. Ona saw this, and was very careful not to destroy his
peace of mind, by letting him know how very much pain she was
suffering. It was now the time of the spring rains, and Ona had often
to ride to her work, in spite of the expense; she was getting paler
every day, and sometimes, in spite of her good resolutions, it pained
her that Jurgis did not notice it. She wondered if he cared for her as
much as ever, if all this misery was not wearing out his love. She had
to be away from him all the time, and bear her own troubles while he
was bearing his; and then, when she came home, she was so worn out; and
whenever they talked they had only their worries to talk of—truly it
was hard, in such a life, to keep any sentiment alive. The woe of this
would flame up in Ona sometimes—at night she would suddenly clasp her
big husband in her arms and break into passionate weeping, demanding to
know if he really loved her. Poor Jurgis, who had in truth grown more
matter-of-fact, under the endless pressure of penury, would not know
what to make of these things, and could only try to recollect when he
had last been cross; and so Ona would have to forgive him and sob
herself to sleep.

The latter part of April Jurgis went to see the doctor, and was given a
bandage to lace about his ankle, and told that he might go back to
work. It needed more than the permission of the doctor, however, for
when he showed up on the killing floor of Brown’s, he was told by the
foreman that it had not been possible to keep his job for him. Jurgis
knew that this meant simply that the foreman had found some one else to
do the work as well and did not want to bother to make a change. He
stood in the doorway, looking mournfully on, seeing his friends and
companions at work, and feeling like an outcast. Then he went out and
took his place with the mob of the unemployed.

This time, however, Jurgis did not have the same fine confidence, nor
the same reason for it. He was no longer the finest-looking man in the
throng, and the bosses no longer made for him; he was thin and haggard,
and his clothes were seedy, and he looked miserable. And there were
hundreds who looked and felt just like him, and who had been wandering
about Packingtown for months begging for work. This was a critical time
in Jurgis’ life, and if he had been a weaker man he would have gone the
way the rest did. Those out-of-work wretches would stand about the
packing houses every morning till the police drove them away, and then
they would scatter among the saloons. Very few of them had the nerve to
face the rebuffs that they would encounter by trying to get into the
buildings to interview the bosses; if they did not get a chance in the
morning, there would be nothing to do but hang about the saloons the
rest of the day and night. Jurgis was saved from all this—partly, to be
sure, because it was pleasant weather, and there was no need to be
indoors; but mainly because he carried with him always the pitiful
little face of his wife. He must get work, he told himself, fighting
the battle with despair every hour of the day. He must get work! He
must have a place again and some money saved up, before the next winter
came.

But there was no work for him. He sought out all the members of his
union—Jurgis had stuck to the union through all this—and begged them to
speak a word for him. He went to every one he knew, asking for a
chance, there or anywhere. He wandered all day through the buildings;
and in a week or two, when he had been all over the yards, and into
every room to which he had access, and learned that there was not a job
anywhere, he persuaded himself that there might have been a change in
the places he had first visited, and began the round all over; till
finally the watchmen and the “spotters” of the companies came to know
him by sight and to order him out with threats. Then there was nothing
more for him to do but go with the crowd in the morning, and keep in
the front row and look eager, and when he failed, go back home, and
play with little Kotrina and the baby.

The peculiar bitterness of all this was that Jurgis saw so plainly the
meaning of it. In the beginning he had been fresh and strong, and he
had gotten a job the first day; but now he was second-hand, a damaged
article, so to speak, and they did not want him. They had got the best
of him—they had worn him out, with their speeding-up and their
carelessness, and now they had thrown him away! And Jurgis would make
the acquaintance of others of these unemployed men and find that they
had all had the same experience. There were some, of course, who had
wandered in from other places, who had been ground up in other mills;
there were others who were out from their own fault—some, for instance,
who had not been able to stand the awful grind without drink. The vast
majority, however, were simply the worn-out parts of the great
merciless packing machine; they had toiled there, and kept up with the
pace, some of them for ten or twenty years, until finally the time had
come when they could not keep up with it any more. Some had been
frankly told that they were too old, that a sprier man was needed;
others had given occasion, by some act of carelessness or incompetence;
with most, however, the occasion had been the same as with Jurgis. They
had been overworked and underfed so long, and finally some disease had
laid them on their backs; or they had cut themselves, and had blood
poisoning, or met with some other accident. When a man came back after
that, he would get his place back only by the courtesy of the boss. To
this there was no exception, save when the accident was one for which
the firm was liable; in that case they would send a slippery lawyer to
see him, first to try to get him to sign away his claims, but if he was
too smart for that, to promise him that he and his should always be
provided with work. This promise they would keep, strictly and to the
letter—for two years. Two years was the “statute of limitations,” and
after that the victim could not sue.

What happened to a man after any of these things, all depended upon the
circumstances. If he were of the highly skilled workers, he would
probably have enough saved up to tide him over. The best paid men, the
“splitters,” made fifty cents an hour, which would be five or six
dollars a day in the rush seasons, and one or two in the dullest. A man
could live and save on that; but then there were only half a dozen
splitters in each place, and one of them that Jurgis knew had a family
of twenty-two children, all hoping to grow up to be splitters like
their father. For an unskilled man, who made ten dollars a week in the
rush seasons and five in the dull, it all depended upon his age and the
number he had dependent upon him. An unmarried man could save, if he
did not drink, and if he was absolutely selfish—that is, if he paid no
heed to the demands of his old parents, or of his little brothers and
sisters, or of any other relatives he might have, as well as of the
members of his union, and his chums, and the people who might be
starving to death next door.