The Jungle

arly in the fall Jurgis set out for Chicago again. All the joy went
out of tramping as soon as a man could not keep warm in the hay; and,
like many thousands of others, he deluded himself with the hope that by
coming early he could avoid the rush. He brought fifteen dollars with
him, hidden away in one of his shoes, a sum which had been saved from
the saloon-keepers, not so much by his conscience, as by the fear which
filled him at the thought of being out of work in the city in the
winter time.

He traveled upon the railroad with several other men, hiding in freight
cars at night, and liable to be thrown off at any time, regardless of
the speed of the train. When he reached the city he left the rest, for
he had money and they did not, and he meant to save himself in this
fight. He would bring to it all the skill that practice had brought
him, and he would stand, whoever fell. On fair nights he would sleep in
the park or on a truck or an empty barrel or box, and when it was rainy
or cold he would stow himself upon a shelf in a ten-cent lodging-house,
or pay three cents for the privileges of a “squatter” in a tenement
hallway. He would eat at free lunches, five cents a meal, and never a
cent more—so he might keep alive for two months and more, and in that
time he would surely find a job. He would have to bid farewell to his
summer cleanliness, of course, for he would come out of the first
night’s lodging with his clothes alive with vermin. There was no place
in the city where he could wash even his face, unless he went down to
the lake front—and there it would soon be all ice.

First he went to the steel mill and the harvester works, and found that
his places there had been filled long ago. He was careful to keep away
from the stockyards—he was a single man now, he told himself, and he
meant to stay one, to have his wages for his own when he got a job. He
began the long, weary round of factories and warehouses, tramping all
day, from one end of the city to the other, finding everywhere from ten
to a hundred men ahead of him. He watched the newspapers, too—but no
longer was he to be taken in by smooth-spoken agents. He had been told
of all those tricks while “on the road.”

In the end it was through a newspaper that he got a job, after nearly a
month of seeking. It was a call for a hundred laborers, and though he
thought it was a “fake,” he went because the place was near by. He
found a line of men a block long, but as a wagon chanced to come out of
an alley and break the line, he saw his chance and sprang to seize a
place. Men threatened him and tried to throw him out, but he cursed and
made a disturbance to attract a policeman, upon which they subsided,
knowing that if the latter interfered it would be to “fire” them all.

An hour or two later he entered a room and confronted a big Irishman
behind a desk.

“Ever worked in Chicago before?” the man inquired; and whether it was a
good angel that put it into Jurgis’s mind, or an intuition of his
sharpened wits, he was moved to answer, “No, sir.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Kansas City, sir.”

“Any references?”

“No, sir. I’m just an unskilled man. I’ve got good arms.”

“I want men for hard work—it’s all underground, digging tunnels for
telephones. Maybe it won’t suit you.”

“I’m willing, sir—anything for me. What’s the pay?”

“Fifteen cents an hour.”

“I’m willing, sir.”

“All right; go back there and give your name.”

So within half an hour he was at work, far underneath the streets of
the city. The tunnel was a peculiar one for telephone wires; it was
about eight feet high, and with a level floor nearly as wide. It had
innumerable branches—a perfect spider web beneath the city; Jurgis
walked over half a mile with his gang to the place where they were to
work. Stranger yet, the tunnel was lighted by electricity, and upon it
was laid a double-tracked, narrow-gauge railroad!

But Jurgis was not there to ask questions, and he did not give the
matter a thought. It was nearly a year afterward that he finally
learned the meaning of this whole affair. The City Council had passed a
quiet and innocent little bill allowing a company to construct
telephone conduits under the city streets; and upon the strength of
this, a great corporation had proceeded to tunnel all Chicago with a
system of railway freight-subways. In the city there was a combination
of employers, representing hundreds of millions of capital, and formed
for the purpose of crushing the labor unions. The chief union which
troubled it was the teamsters’; and when these freight tunnels were
completed, connecting all the big factories and stores with the
railroad depots, they would have the teamsters’ union by the throat.
Now and then there were rumors and murmurs in the Board of Aldermen,
and once there was a committee to investigate—but each time another
small fortune was paid over, and the rumors died away; until at last
the city woke up with a start to find the work completed. There was a
tremendous scandal, of course; it was found that the city records had
been falsified and other crimes committed, and some of Chicago’s big
capitalists got into jail—figuratively speaking. The aldermen declared
that they had had no idea of it all, in spite of the fact that the main
entrance to the work had been in the rear of the saloon of one of them.

It was in a newly opened cut that Jurgis worked, and so he knew that he
had an all-winter job. He was so rejoiced that he treated himself to a
spree that night, and with the balance of his money he hired himself a
place in a tenement room, where he slept upon a big homemade straw
mattress along with four other workingmen. This was one dollar a week,
and for four more he got his food in a boardinghouse near his work.
This would leave him four dollars extra each week, an unthinkable sum
for him. At the outset he had to pay for his digging tools, and also to
buy a pair of heavy boots, since his shoes were falling to pieces, and
a flannel shirt, since the one he had worn all summer was in shreds. He
spent a week meditating whether or not he should also buy an overcoat.
There was one belonging to a Hebrew collar button peddler, who had died
in the room next to him, and which the landlady was holding for her
rent; in the end, however, Jurgis decided to do without it, as he was
to be underground by day and in bed at night.

This was an unfortunate decision, however, for it drove him more
quickly than ever into the saloons. From now on Jurgis worked from
seven o’clock until half-past five, with half an hour for dinner; which
meant that he never saw the sunlight on weekdays. In the evenings there
was no place for him to go except a barroom; no place where there was
light and warmth, where he could hear a little music or sit with a
companion and talk. He had now no home to go to; he had no affection
left in his life—only the pitiful mockery of it in the camaraderie of
vice. On Sundays the churches were open—but where was there a church in
which an ill-smelling workingman, with vermin crawling upon his neck,
could sit without seeing people edge away and look annoyed? He had, of
course, his corner in a close though unheated room, with a window
opening upon a blank wall two feet away; and also he had the bare
streets, with the winter gales sweeping through them; besides this he
had only the saloons—and, of course, he had to drink to stay in them.
If he drank now and then he was free to make himself at home, to gamble
with dice or a pack of greasy cards, to play at a dingy pool table for
money, or to look at a beer-stained pink “sporting paper,” with
pictures of murderers and half-naked women. It was for such pleasures
as these that he spent his money; and such was his life during the six
weeks and a half that he toiled for the merchants of Chicago, to enable
them to break the grip of their teamsters’ union.

In a work thus carried out, not much thought was given to the welfare
of the laborers. On an average, the tunneling cost a life a day and
several manglings; it was seldom, however, that more than a dozen or
two men heard of any one accident. The work was all done by the new
boring machinery, with as little blasting as possible; but there would
be falling rocks and crushed supports, and premature explosions—and in
addition all the dangers of railroading. So it was that one night, as
Jurgis was on his way out with his gang, an engine and a loaded car
dashed round one of the innumerable right-angle branches and struck him
upon the shoulder, hurling him against the concrete wall and knocking
him senseless.

When he opened his eyes again it was to the clanging of the bell of an
ambulance. He was lying in it, covered by a blanket, and it was
threading its way slowly through the holiday-shopping crowds. They took
him to the county hospital, where a young surgeon set his arm; then he
was washed and laid upon a bed in a ward with a score or two more of
maimed and mangled men.

Jurgis spent his Christmas in this hospital, and it was the pleasantest
Christmas he had had in America. Every year there were scandals and
investigations in this institution, the newspapers charging that
doctors were allowed to try fantastic experiments upon the patients;
but Jurgis knew nothing of this—his only complaint was that they used
to feed him upon tinned meat, which no man who had ever worked in
Packingtown would feed to his dog. Jurgis had often wondered just who
ate the canned corned beef and “roast beef” of the stockyards; now he
began to understand—that it was what you might call “graft meat,” put
up to be sold to public officials and contractors, and eaten by
soldiers and sailors, prisoners and inmates of institutions,
“shantymen” and gangs of railroad laborers.

Jurgis was ready to leave the hospital at the end of two weeks. This
did not mean that his arm was strong and that he was able to go back to
work, but simply that he could get along without further attention, and
that his place was needed for some one worse off than he. That he was
utterly helpless, and had no means of keeping himself alive in the
meantime, was something which did not concern the hospital authorities,
nor any one else in the city.

As it chanced, he had been hurt on a Monday, and had just paid for his
last week’s board and his room rent, and spent nearly all the balance
of his Saturday’s pay. He had less than seventy-five cents in his
pockets, and a dollar and a half due him for the day’s work he had done
before he was hurt. He might possibly have sued the company, and got
some damages for his injuries, but he did not know this, and it was not
the company’s business to tell him. He went and got his pay and his
tools, which he left in a pawnshop for fifty cents. Then he went to his
landlady, who had rented his place and had no other for him; and then
to his boardinghouse keeper, who looked him over and questioned him. As
he must certainly be helpless for a couple of months, and had boarded
there only six weeks, she decided very quickly that it would not be
worth the risk to keep him on trust.

So Jurgis went out into the streets, in a most dreadful plight. It was
bitterly cold, and a heavy snow was falling, beating into his face. He
had no overcoat, and no place to go, and two dollars and sixty-five
cents in his pocket, with the certainty that he could not earn another
cent for months. The snow meant no chance to him now; he must walk
along and see others shoveling, vigorous and active—and he with his
left arm bound to his side! He could not hope to tide himself over by
odd jobs of loading trucks; he could not even sell newspapers or carry
satchels, because he was now at the mercy of any rival. Words could not
paint the terror that came over him as he realized all this. He was
like a wounded animal in the forest; he was forced to compete with his
enemies upon unequal terms. There would be no consideration for him
because of his weakness—it was no one’s business to help him in such
distress, to make the fight the least bit easier for him. Even if he
took to begging, he would be at a disadvantage, for reasons which he
was to discover in good time.

In the beginning he could not think of anything except getting out of
the awful cold. He went into one of the saloons he had been wont to
frequent and bought a drink, and then stood by the fire shivering and
waiting to be ordered out. According to an unwritten law, the buying a
drink included the privilege of loafing for just so long; then one had
to buy another drink or move on. That Jurgis was an old customer
entitled him to a somewhat longer stop; but then he had been away two
weeks, and was evidently “on the bum.” He might plead and tell his
“hard luck story,” but that would not help him much; a saloon-keeper
who was to be moved by such means would soon have his place jammed to
the doors with “hoboes” on a day like this.

So Jurgis went out into another place, and paid another nickel. He was
so hungry this time that he could not resist the hot beef stew, an
indulgence which cut short his stay by a considerable time. When he was
again told to move on, he made his way to a “tough” place in the
“Lêvée” district, where now and then he had gone with a certain
rat-eyed Bohemian workingman of his acquaintance, seeking a woman. It
was Jurgis’s vain hope that here the proprietor would let him remain as
a “sitter.” In low-class places, in the dead of winter, saloon-keepers
would often allow one or two forlorn-looking bums who came in covered
with snow or soaked with rain to sit by the fire and look miserable to
attract custom. A workingman would come in, feeling cheerful after his
day’s work was over, and it would trouble him to have to take his glass
with such a sight under his nose; and so he would call out: “Hello,
Bub, what’s the matter? You look as if you’d been up against it!” And
then the other would begin to pour out some tale of misery, and the man
would say, “Come have a glass, and maybe that’ll brace you up.” And so
they would drink together, and if the tramp was sufficiently
wretched-looking, or good enough at the “gab,” they might have two; and
if they were to discover that they were from the same country, or had
lived in the same city or worked at the same trade, they might sit down
at a table and spend an hour or two in talk—and before they got through
the saloon-keeper would have taken in a dollar. All of this might seem
diabolical, but the saloon-keeper was in no wise to blame for it. He
was in the same plight as the manufacturer who has to adulterate and
misrepresent his product. If he does not, some one else will; and the
saloon-keeper, unless he is also an alderman, is apt to be in debt to
the big brewers, and on the verge of being sold out.

The market for “sitters” was glutted that afternoon, however, and there
was no place for Jurgis. In all he had to spend six nickels in keeping
a shelter over him that frightful day, and then it was just dark, and
the station houses would not open until midnight! At the last place,
however, there was a bartender who knew him and liked him, and let him
doze at one of the tables until the boss came back; and also, as he was
going out, the man gave him a tip—on the next block there was a
religious revival of some sort, with preaching and singing, and
hundreds of hoboes would go there for the shelter and warmth.

Jurgis went straightway, and saw a sign hung out, saying that the door
would open at seven-thirty; then he walked, or half ran, a block, and
hid awhile in a doorway and then ran again, and so on until the hour.
At the end he was all but frozen, and fought his way in with the rest
of the throng (at the risk of having his arm broken again), and got
close to the big stove.

By eight o’clock the place was so crowded that the speakers ought to
have been flattered; the aisles were filled halfway up, and at the door
men were packed tight enough to walk upon. There were three elderly
gentlemen in black upon the platform, and a young lady who played the
piano in front. First they sang a hymn, and then one of the three, a
tall, smooth-shaven man, very thin, and wearing black spectacles, began
an address. Jurgis heard smatterings of it, for the reason that terror
kept him awake—he knew that he snored abominably, and to have been put
out just then would have been like a sentence of death to him.

The evangelist was preaching “sin and redemption,” the infinite grace
of God and His pardon for human frailty. He was very much in earnest,
and he meant well, but Jurgis, as he listened, found his soul filled
with hatred. What did he know about sin and suffering—with his smooth,
black coat and his neatly starched collar, his body warm, and his belly
full, and money in his pocket—and lecturing men who were struggling for
their lives, men at the death grapple with the demon powers of hunger
and cold!—This, of course, was unfair; but Jurgis felt that these men
were out of touch with the life they discussed, that they were unfitted
to solve its problems; nay, they themselves were part of the
problem—they were part of the order established that was crushing men
down and beating them! They were of the triumphant and insolent
possessors; they had a hall, and a fire, and food and clothing and
money, and so they might preach to hungry men, and the hungry men must
be humble and listen! They were trying to save their souls—and who but
a fool could fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls
was that they had not been able to get a decent existence for their
bodies?

At eleven the meeting closed, and the desolate audience filed out into
the snow, muttering curses upon the few traitors who had got repentance
and gone up on the platform. It was yet an hour before the station
house would open, and Jurgis had no overcoat—and was weak from a long
illness. During that hour he nearly perished. He was obliged to run
hard to keep his blood moving at all—and then he came back to the
station house and found a crowd blocking the street before the door!
This was in the month of January, 1904, when the country was on the
verge of “hard times,” and the newspapers were reporting the shutting
down of factories every day—it was estimated that a million and a half
men were thrown out of work before the spring. So all the hiding places
of the city were crowded, and before that station house door men fought
and tore each other like savage beasts. When at last the place was
jammed and they shut the doors, half the crowd was still outside; and
Jurgis, with his helpless arm, was among them. There was no choice then
but to go to a lodging-house and spend another dime. It really broke
his heart to do this, at half-past twelve o’clock, after he had wasted
the night at the meeting and on the street. He would be turned out of
the lodging-house promptly at seven—they had the shelves which served
as bunks so contrived that they could be dropped, and any man who was
slow about obeying orders could be tumbled to the floor.

This was one day, and the cold spell lasted for fourteen of them. At
the end of six days every cent of Jurgis’ money was gone; and then he
went out on the streets to beg for his life.

He would begin as soon as the business of the city was moving. He would
sally forth from a saloon, and, after making sure there was no
policeman in sight, would approach every likely-looking person who
passed him, telling his woeful story and pleading for a nickel or a
dime. Then when he got one, he would dart round the corner and return
to his base to get warm; and his victim, seeing him do this, would go
away, vowing that he would never give a cent to a beggar again. The
victim never paused to ask where else Jurgis could have gone under the
circumstances—where he, the victim, would have gone. At the saloon
Jurgis could not only get more food and better food than he could buy
in any restaurant for the same money, but a drink in the bargain to
warm him up. Also he could find a comfortable seat by a fire, and could
chat with a companion until he was as warm as toast. At the saloon,
too, he felt at home. Part of the saloon-keeper’s business was to offer
a home and refreshments to beggars in exchange for the proceeds of
their foragings; and was there any one else in the whole city who would
do this—would the victim have done it himself?

Poor Jurgis might have been expected to make a successful beggar. He
was just out of the hospital, and desperately sick-looking, and with a
helpless arm; also he had no overcoat, and shivered pitifully. But,
alas, it was again the case of the honest merchant, who finds that the
genuine and unadulterated article is driven to the wall by the artistic
counterfeit. Jurgis, as a beggar, was simply a blundering amateur in
competition with organized and scientific professionalism. He was just
out of the hospital—but the story was worn threadbare, and how could he
prove it? He had his arm in a sling—and it was a device a regular
beggar’s little boy would have scorned. He was pale and shivering—but
they were made up with cosmetics, and had studied the art of chattering
their teeth. As to his being without an overcoat, among them you would
meet men you could swear had on nothing but a ragged linen duster and a
pair of cotton trousers—so cleverly had they concealed the several
suits of all-wool underwear beneath. Many of these professional
mendicants had comfortable homes, and families, and thousands of
dollars in the bank; some of them had retired upon their earnings, and
gone into the business of fitting out and doctoring others, or working
children at the trade. There were some who had both their arms bound
tightly to their sides, and padded stumps in their sleeves, and a sick
child hired to carry a cup for them. There were some who had no legs,
and pushed themselves upon a wheeled platform—some who had been favored
with blindness, and were led by pretty little dogs. Some less fortunate
had mutilated themselves or burned themselves, or had brought horrible
sores upon themselves with chemicals; you might suddenly encounter upon
the street a man holding out to you a finger rotting and discolored
with gangrene—or one with livid scarlet wounds half escaped from their
filthy bandages. These desperate ones were the dregs of the city’s
cesspools, wretches who hid at night in the rain-soaked cellars of old
ramshackle tenements, in “stale-beer dives” and opium joints, with
abandoned women in the last stages of the harlot’s progress—women who
had been kept by Chinamen and turned away at last to die. Every day the
police net would drag hundreds of them off the streets, and in the
detention hospital you might see them, herded together in a miniature
inferno, with hideous, beastly faces, bloated and leprous with disease,
laughing, shouting, screaming in all stages of drunkenness, barking
like dogs, gibbering like apes, raving and tearing themselves in
delirium.