The Jungle

urgis did not get out of the Bridewell quite as soon as he had
expected. To his sentence there were added “court costs” of a dollar
and a half—he was supposed to pay for the trouble of putting him in
jail, and not having the money, was obliged to work it off by three
days more of toil. Nobody had taken the trouble to tell him this—only
after counting the days and looking forward to the end in an agony of
impatience, when the hour came that he expected to be free he found
himself still set at the stone heap, and laughed at when he ventured to
protest. Then he concluded he must have counted wrong; but as another
day passed, he gave up all hope—and was sunk in the depths of despair,
when one morning after breakfast a keeper came to him with the word
that his time was up at last. So he doffed his prison garb, and put on
his old fertilizer clothing, and heard the door of the prison clang
behind him.

He stood upon the steps, bewildered; he could hardly believe that it
was true,—that the sky was above him again and the open street before
him; that he was a free man. But then the cold began to strike through
his clothes, and he started quickly away.

There had been a heavy snow, and now a thaw had set in; fine sleety
rain was falling, driven by a wind that pierced Jurgis to the bone. He
had not stopped for his-overcoat when he set out to “do up” Connor, and
so his rides in the patrol wagons had been cruel experiences; his
clothing was old and worn thin, and it never had been very warm. Now as
he trudged on the rain soon wet it through; there were six inches of
watery slush on the sidewalks, so that his feet would soon have been
soaked, even had there been no holes in his shoes.

Jurgis had had enough to eat in the jail, and the work had been the
least trying of any that he had done since he came to Chicago; but even
so, he had not grown strong—the fear and grief that had preyed upon his
mind had worn him thin. Now he shivered and shrunk from the rain,
hiding his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders together.
The Bridewell grounds were on the outskirts of the city and the country
around them was unsettled and wild—on one side was the big drainage
canal, and on the other a maze of railroad tracks, and so the wind had
full sweep.

After walking a ways, Jurgis met a little ragamuffin whom he hailed:
“Hey, sonny!” The boy cocked one eye at him—he knew that Jurgis was a
“jailbird” by his shaven head. “Wot yer want?” he queried.

“How do you go to the stockyards?” Jurgis demanded.

“I don’t go,” replied the boy.

Jurgis hesitated a moment, nonplussed. Then he said, “I mean which is
the way?”

“Why don’t yer say so then?” was the response, and the boy pointed to
the northwest, across the tracks. “That way.”

“How far is it?” Jurgis asked. “I dunno,” said the other. “Mebbe twenty
miles or so.”

“Twenty miles!” Jurgis echoed, and his face fell. He had to walk every
foot of it, for they had turned him out of jail without a penny in his
pockets.

Yet, when he once got started, and his blood had warmed with walking,
he forgot everything in the fever of his thoughts. All the dreadful
imaginations that had haunted him in his cell now rushed into his mind
at once. The agony was almost over—he was going to find out; and he
clenched his hands in his pockets as he strode, following his flying
desire, almost at a run. Ona—the baby—the family—the house—he would
know the truth about them all! And he was coming to the rescue—he was
free again! His hands were his own, and he could help them, he could do
battle for them against the world.

For an hour or so he walked thus, and then he began to look about him.
He seemed to be leaving the city altogether. The street was turning
into a country road, leading out to the westward; there were
snow-covered fields on either side of him. Soon he met a farmer driving
a two-horse wagon loaded with straw, and he stopped him.

“Is this the way to the stockyards?” he asked.

The farmer scratched his head. “I dunno jest where they be,” he said.
“But they’re in the city somewhere, and you’re going dead away from it
now.”

Jurgis looked dazed. “I was told this was the way,” he said.

“Who told you?”

“A boy.”

“Well, mebbe he was playing a joke on ye. The best thing ye kin do is
to go back, and when ye git into town ask a policeman. I’d take ye in,
only I’ve come a long ways an’ I’m loaded heavy. Git up!”

So Jurgis turned and followed, and toward the end of the morning he
began to see Chicago again. Past endless blocks of two-story shanties
he walked, along wooden sidewalks and unpaved pathways treacherous with
deep slush holes. Every few blocks there would be a railroad crossing
on the level with the sidewalk, a deathtrap for the unwary; long
freight trains would be passing, the cars clanking and crashing
together, and Jurgis would pace about waiting, burning up with a fever
of impatience. Occasionally the cars would stop for some minutes, and
wagons and streetcars would crowd together waiting, the drivers
swearing at each other, or hiding beneath umbrellas out of the rain; at
such times Jurgis would dodge under the gates and run across the tracks
and between the cars, taking his life into his hands.

He crossed a long bridge over a river frozen solid and covered with
slush. Not even on the river bank was the snow white—the rain which
fell was a diluted solution of smoke, and Jurgis’ hands and face were
streaked with black. Then he came into the business part of the city,
where the streets were sewers of inky blackness, with horses sleeping
and plunging, and women and children flying across in panic-stricken
droves. These streets were huge canyons formed by towering black
buildings, echoing with the clang of car gongs and the shouts of
drivers; the people who swarmed in them were as busy as ants—all
hurrying breathlessly, never stopping to look at anything nor at each
other. The solitary trampish-looking foreigner, with water-soaked
clothing and haggard face and anxious eyes, was as much alone as he
hurried past them, as much unheeded and as lost, as if he had been a
thousand miles deep in a wilderness.

A policeman gave him his direction and told him that he had five miles
to go. He came again to the slum districts, to avenues of saloons and
cheap stores, with long dingy red factory buildings, and coal-yards and
railroad tracks; and then Jurgis lifted up his head and began to sniff
the air like a startled animal—scenting the far-off odor of home. It
was late afternoon then, and he was hungry, but the dinner invitations
hung out of the saloons were not for him.

So he came at last to the stockyards, to the black volcanoes of smoke
and the lowing cattle and the stench. Then, seeing a crowded car, his
impatience got the better of him and he jumped aboard, hiding behind
another man, unnoticed by the conductor. In ten minutes more he had
reached his street, and home.

He was half running as he came round the corner. There was the house,
at any rate—and then suddenly he stopped and stared. What was the
matter with the house?

Jurgis looked twice, bewildered; then he glanced at the house next door
and at the one beyond—then at the saloon on the corner. Yes, it was the
right place, quite certainly—he had not made any mistake. But the
house—the house was a different color!

He came a couple of steps nearer. Yes; it had been gray and now it was
yellow! The trimmings around the windows had been red, and now they
were green! It was all newly painted! How strange it made it seem!

Jurgis went closer yet, but keeping on the other side of the street. A
sudden and horrible spasm of fear had come over him. His knees were
shaking beneath him, and his mind was in a whirl. New paint on the
house, and new weatherboards, where the old had begun to rot off, and
the agent had got after them! New shingles over the hole in the roof,
too, the hole that had for six months been the bane of his soul—he
having no money to have it fixed and no time to fix it himself, and the
rain leaking in, and overflowing the pots and pans he put to catch it,
and flooding the attic and loosening the plaster. And now it was fixed!
And the broken windowpane replaced! And curtains in the windows! New,
white curtains, stiff and shiny!

Then suddenly the front door opened. Jurgis stood, his chest heaving as
he struggled to catch his breath. A boy had come out, a stranger to
him; a big, fat, rosy-cheeked youngster, such as had never been seen in
his home before.

Jurgis stared at the boy, fascinated. He came down the steps whistling,
kicking off the snow. He stopped at the foot, and picked up some, and
then leaned against the railing, making a snowball. A moment later he
looked around and saw Jurgis, and their eyes met; it was a hostile
glance, the boy evidently thinking that the other had suspicions of the
snowball. When Jurgis started slowly across the street toward him, he
gave a quick glance about, meditating retreat, but then he concluded to
stand his ground.

Jurgis took hold of the railing of the steps, for he was a little
unsteady. “What—what are you doing here?” he managed to gasp.

“Go on!” said the boy.

“You—” Jurgis tried again. “What do you want here?”

“Me?” answered the boy, angrily. “I live here.”

“You live here!” Jurgis panted. He turned white and clung more tightly
to the railing. “You live here! Then where’s my family?”

The boy looked surprised. “Your family!” he echoed.

And Jurgis started toward him. “I—this is my house!” he cried.

“Come off!” said the boy; then suddenly the door upstairs opened, and
he called: “Hey, ma! Here’s a fellow says he owns this house.”

A stout Irishwoman came to the top of the steps. “What’s that?” she
demanded.

Jurgis turned toward her. “Where is my family?” he cried, wildly. “I
left them here! This is my home! What are you doing in my home?”

The woman stared at him in frightened wonder, she must have thought she
was dealing with a maniac—Jurgis looked like one. “Your home!” she
echoed.

“My home!” he half shrieked. “I lived here, I tell you.”

“You must be mistaken,” she answered him. “No one ever lived here. This
is a new house. They told us so. They—”

“What have they done with my family?” shouted Jurgis, frantically.

A light had begun to break upon the woman; perhaps she had had doubts
of what “they” had told her. “I don’t know where your family is,” she
said. “I bought the house only three days ago, and there was nobody
here, and they told me it was all new. Do you really mean you had ever
rented it?”

“Rented it!” panted Jurgis. “I bought it! I paid for it! I own it! And
they—my God, can’t you tell me where my people went?”

She made him understand at last that she knew nothing. Jurgis’ brain
was so confused that he could not grasp the situation. It was as if his
family had been wiped out of existence; as if they were proving to be
dream people, who never had existed at all. He was quite lost—but then
suddenly he thought of Grandmother Majauszkiene, who lived in the next
block. She would know! He turned and started at a run.

Grandmother Majauszkiene came to the door herself. She cried out when
she saw Jurgis, wild-eyed and shaking. Yes, yes, she could tell him.
The family had moved; they had not been able to pay the rent and they
had been turned out into the snow, and the house had been repainted and
sold again the next week. No, she had not heard how they were, but she
could tell him that they had gone back to Aniele Jukniene, with whom
they had stayed when they first came to the yards. Wouldn’t Jurgis come
in and rest? It was certainly too bad—if only he had not got into jail—

And so Jurgis turned and staggered away. He did not go very far round
the corner he gave out completely, and sat down on the steps of a
saloon, and hid his face in his hands, and shook all over with dry,
racking sobs.

Their home! Their home! They had lost it! Grief, despair, rage,
overwhelmed him—what was any imagination of the thing to this
heartbreaking, crushing reality of it—to the sight of strange people
living in his house, hanging their curtains to his windows, staring at
him with hostile eyes! It was monstrous, it was unthinkable—they could
not do it—it could not be true! Only think what he had suffered for
that house—what miseries they had all suffered for it—the price they
had paid for it!

The whole long agony came back to him. Their sacrifices in the
beginning, their three hundred dollars that they had scraped together,
all they owned in the world, all that stood between them and
starvation! And then their toil, month by month, to get together the
twelve dollars, and the interest as well, and now and then the taxes,
and the other charges, and the repairs, and what not! Why, they had put
their very souls into their payments on that house, they had paid for
it with their sweat and tears—yes, more, with their very lifeblood.
Dede Antanas had died of the struggle to earn that money—he would have
been alive and strong today if he had not had to work in Durham’s dark
cellars to earn his share. And Ona, too, had given her health and
strength to pay for it—she was wrecked and ruined because of it; and so
was he, who had been a big, strong man three years ago, and now sat
here shivering, broken, cowed, weeping like a hysterical child. Ah!
they had cast their all into the fight; and they had lost, they had
lost! All that they had paid was gone—every cent of it. And their house
was gone—they were back where they had started from, flung out into the
cold to starve and freeze!

Jurgis could see all the truth now—could see himself, through the whole
long course of events, the victim of ravenous vultures that had torn
into his vitals and devoured him; of fiends that had racked and
tortured him, mocking him, meantime, jeering in his face. Ah, God, the
horror of it, the monstrous, hideous, demoniacal wickedness of it! He
and his family, helpless women and children, struggling to live,
ignorant and defenseless and forlorn as they were—and the enemies that
had been lurking for them, crouching upon their trail and thirsting for
their blood! That first lying circular, that smooth-tongued slippery
agent! That trap of the extra payments, the interest, and all the other
charges that they had not the means to pay, and would never have
attempted to pay! And then all the tricks of the packers, their
masters, the tyrants who ruled them—the shutdowns and the scarcity of
work, the irregular hours and the cruel speeding-up, the lowering of
wages, the raising of prices! The mercilessness of nature about them,
of heat and cold, rain and snow; the mercilessness of the city, of the
country in which they lived, of its laws and customs that they did not
understand! All of these things had worked together for the company
that had marked them for its prey and was waiting for its chance. And
now, with this last hideous injustice, its time had come, and it had
turned them out bag and baggage, and taken their house and sold it
again! And they could do nothing, they were tied hand and foot—the law
was against them, the whole machinery of society was at their
oppressors’ command! If Jurgis so much as raised a hand against them,
back he would go into that wild-beast pen from which he had just
escaped!

To get up and go away was to give up, to acknowledge defeat, to leave
the strange family in possession; and Jurgis might have sat shivering
in the rain for hours before he could do that, had it not been for the
thought of his family. It might be that he had worse things yet to
learn—and so he got to his feet and started away, walking on, wearily,
half-dazed.

To Aniele’s house, in back of the yards, was a good two miles; the
distance had never seemed longer to Jurgis, and when he saw the
familiar dingy-gray shanty his heart was beating fast. He ran up the
steps and began to hammer upon the door.

The old woman herself came to open it. She had shrunk all up with her
rheumatism since Jurgis had seen her last, and her yellow parchment
face stared up at him from a little above the level of the doorknob.
She gave a start when she saw him. “Is Ona here?” he cried,
breathlessly.

“Yes,” was the answer, “she’s here.”

“How—” Jurgis began, and then stopped short, clutching convulsively at
the side of the door. From somewhere within the house had come a sudden
cry, a wild, horrible scream of anguish. And the voice was Ona’s. For a
moment Jurgis stood half-paralyzed with fright; then he bounded past
the old woman and into the room.

It was Aniele’s kitchen, and huddled round the stove were half a dozen
women, pale and frightened. One of them started to her feet as Jurgis
entered; she was haggard and frightfully thin, with one arm tied up in
bandages—he hardly realized that it was Marija. He looked first for
Ona; then, not seeing her, he stared at the women, expecting them to
speak. But they sat dumb, gazing back at him, panic-stricken; and a
second later came another piercing scream.

It was from the rear of the house, and upstairs. Jurgis bounded to a
door of the room and flung it open; there was a ladder leading through
a trap door to the garret, and he was at the foot of it when suddenly
he heard a voice behind him, and saw Marija at his heels. She seized
him by the sleeve with her good hand, panting wildly, “No, no, Jurgis!
Stop!”

“What do you mean?” he gasped.

“You mustn’t go up,” she cried.

Jurgis was half-crazed with bewilderment and fright. “What’s the
matter?” he shouted. “What is it?”

Marija clung to him tightly; he could hear Ona sobbing and moaning
above, and he fought to get away and climb up, without waiting for her
reply. “No, no,” she rushed on. “Jurgis! You mustn’t go up! It’s—it’s
the child!”

“The child?” he echoed in perplexity. “Antanas?”

Marija answered him, in a whisper: “The new one!”

And then Jurgis went limp, and caught himself on the ladder. He stared
at her as if she were a ghost. “The new one!” he gasped. “But it isn’t
time,” he added, wildly.

Marija nodded. “I know,” she said; “but it’s come.”

And then again came Ona’s scream, smiting him like a blow in the face,
making him wince and turn white. Her voice died away into a wail—then
he heard her sobbing again, “My God—let me die, let me die!” And Marija
hung her arms about him, crying: “Come out! Come away!”

She dragged him back into the kitchen, half carrying him, for he had
gone all to pieces. It was as if the pillars of his soul had fallen
in—he was blasted with horror. In the room he sank into a chair,
trembling like a leaf, Marija still holding him, and the women staring
at him in dumb, helpless fright.

And then again Ona cried out; he could hear it nearly as plainly here,
and he staggered to his feet. “How long has this been going on?” he
panted.

“Not very long,” Marija answered, and then, at a signal from Aniele,
she rushed on: “You go away, Jurgis you can’t help—go away and come
back later. It’s all right—it’s—”

“Who’s with her?” Jurgis demanded; and then, seeing Marija hesitating,
he cried again, “Who’s with her?”

“She’s—she’s all right,” she answered. “Elzbieta’s with her.”

“But the doctor!” he panted. “Some one who knows!”

He seized Marija by the arm; she trembled, and her voice sank beneath a
whisper as she replied, “We—we have no money.” Then, frightened at the
look on his face, she exclaimed: “It’s all right, Jurgis! You don’t
understand—go away—go away! Ah, if you only had waited!”

Above her protests Jurgis heard Ona again; he was almost out of his
mind. It was all new to him, raw and horrible—it had fallen upon him
like a lightning stroke. When little Antanas was born he had been at
work, and had known nothing about it until it was over; and now he was
not to be controlled. The frightened women were at their wits’ end; one
after another they tried to reason with him, to make him understand
that this was the lot of woman. In the end they half drove him out into
the rain, where he began to pace up and down, bareheaded and frantic.
Because he could hear Ona from the street, he would first go away to
escape the sounds, and then come back because he could not help it. At
the end of a quarter of an hour he rushed up the steps again, and for
fear that he would break in the door they had to open it and let him
in.

There was no arguing with him. They could not tell him that all was
going well—how could they know, he cried—why, she was dying, she was
being torn to pieces! Listen to her—listen! Why, it was monstrous—it
could not be allowed—there must be some help for it! Had they tried to
get a doctor? They might pay him afterward—they could promise—

“We couldn’t promise, Jurgis,” protested Marija. “We had no money—we
have scarcely been able to keep alive.”

“But I can work,” Jurgis exclaimed. “I can earn money!”

“Yes,” she answered—“but we thought you were in jail. How could we know
when you would return? They will not work for nothing.”

Marija went on to tell how she had tried to find a midwife, and how
they had demanded ten, fifteen, even twenty-five dollars, and that in
cash. “And I had only a quarter,” she said. “I have spent every cent of
my money—all that I had in the bank; and I owe the doctor who has been
coming to see me, and he has stopped because he thinks I don’t mean to
pay him. And we owe Aniele for two weeks’ rent, and she is nearly
starving, and is afraid of being turned out. We have been borrowing and
begging to keep alive, and there is nothing more we can do—”

“And the children?” cried Jurgis.

“The children have not been home for three days, the weather has been
so bad. They could not know what is happening—it came suddenly, two
months before we expected it.”

Jurgis was standing by the table, and he caught himself with his hand;
his head sank and his arms shook—it looked as if he were going to
collapse. Then suddenly Aniele got up and came hobbling toward him,
fumbling in her skirt pocket. She drew out a dirty rag, in one corner
of which she had something tied.

“Here, Jurgis!” she said, “I have some money. Palauk! See!”

She unwrapped it and counted it out—thirty-four cents. “You go, now,”
she said, “and try and get somebody yourself. And maybe the rest can
help—give him some money, you; he will pay you back some day, and it
will do him good to have something to think about, even if he doesn’t
succeed. When he comes back, maybe it will be over.”

And so the other women turned out the contents of their pocketbooks;
most of them had only pennies and nickels, but they gave him all. Mrs.
Olszewski, who lived next door, and had a husband who was a skilled
cattle butcher, but a drinking man, gave nearly half a dollar, enough
to raise the whole sum to a dollar and a quarter. Then Jurgis thrust it
into his pocket, still holding it tightly in his fist, and started away
at a run.