The Jungle

urgis got up, wild with rage, but the door was shut and the great
castle was dark and impregnable. Then the icy teeth of the blast bit
into him, and he turned and went away at a run.

When he stopped again it was because he was coming to frequented
streets and did not wish to attract attention. In spite of that last
humiliation, his heart was thumping fast with triumph. He had come out
ahead on that deal! He put his hand into his trousers’ pocket every now
and then, to make sure that the precious hundred-dollar bill was still
there.

Yet he was in a plight—a curious and even dreadful plight, when he came
to realize it. He had not a single cent but that one bill! And he had
to find some shelter that night he had to change it!

Jurgis spent half an hour walking and debating the problem. There was
no one he could go to for help—he had to manage it all alone. To get it
changed in a lodging-house would be to take his life in his hands—he
would almost certainly be robbed, and perhaps murdered, before morning.
He might go to some hotel or railroad depot and ask to have it changed;
but what would they think, seeing a “bum” like him with a hundred
dollars? He would probably be arrested if he tried it; and what story
could he tell? On the morrow Freddie Jones would discover his loss, and
there would be a hunt for him, and he would lose his money. The only
other plan he could think of was to try in a saloon. He might pay them
to change it, if it could not be done otherwise.

He began peering into places as he walked; he passed several as being
too crowded—then finally, chancing upon one where the bartender was all
alone, he gripped his hands in sudden resolution and went in.

“Can you change me a hundred-dollar bill?” he demanded.

The bartender was a big, husky fellow, with the jaw of a prize fighter,
and a three weeks’ stubble of hair upon it. He stared at Jurgis.
“What’s that youse say?” he demanded.

“I said, could you change me a hundred-dollar bill?”

“Where’d youse get it?” he inquired incredulously.

“Never mind,” said Jurgis; “I’ve got it, and I want it changed. I’ll
pay you if you’ll do it.”

The other stared at him hard. “Lemme see it,” he said.

“Will you change it?” Jurgis demanded, gripping it tightly in his
pocket.

“How the hell can I know if it’s good or not?” retorted the bartender.
“Whatcher take me for, hey?”

Then Jurgis slowly and warily approached him; he took out the bill, and
fumbled it for a moment, while the man stared at him with hostile eyes
across the counter. Then finally he handed it over.

The other took it, and began to examine it; he smoothed it between his
fingers, and held it up to the light; he turned it over, and upside
down, and edgeways. It was new and rather stiff, and that made him
dubious. Jurgis was watching him like a cat all the time.

“Humph,” he said, finally, and gazed at the stranger, sizing him up—a
ragged, ill-smelling tramp, with no overcoat and one arm in a sling—and
a hundred-dollar bill! “Want to buy anything?” he demanded.

“Yes,” said Jurgis, “I’ll take a glass of beer.”

“All right,” said the other, “I’ll change it.” And he put the bill in
his pocket, and poured Jurgis out a glass of beer, and set it on the
counter. Then he turned to the cash register, and punched up five
cents, and began to pull money out of the drawer. Finally, he faced
Jurgis, counting it out—two dimes, a quarter, and fifty cents. “There,”
he said.

For a second Jurgis waited, expecting to see him turn again. “My
ninety-nine dollars,” he said.

“What ninety-nine dollars?” demanded the bartender.

“My change!” he cried—“the rest of my hundred!”

“Go on,” said the bartender, “you’re nutty!”

And Jurgis stared at him with wild eyes. For an instant horror reigned
in him—black, paralyzing, awful horror, clutching him at the heart; and
then came rage, in surging, blinding floods—he screamed aloud, and
seized the glass and hurled it at the other’s head. The man ducked, and
it missed him by half an inch; he rose again and faced Jurgis, who was
vaulting over the bar with his one well arm, and dealt him a smashing
blow in the face, hurling him backward upon the floor. Then, as Jurgis
scrambled to his feet again and started round the counter after him, he
shouted at the top of his voice, “Help! help!”

Jurgis seized a bottle off the counter as he ran; and as the bartender
made a leap he hurled the missile at him with all his force. It just
grazed his head, and shivered into a thousand pieces against the post
of the door. Then Jurgis started back, rushing at the man again in the
middle of the room. This time, in his blind frenzy, he came without a
bottle, and that was all the bartender wanted—he met him halfway and
floored him with a sledgehammer drive between the eyes. An instant
later the screen doors flew open, and two men rushed in—just as Jurgis
was getting to his feet again, foaming at the mouth with rage, and
trying to tear his broken arm out of its bandages.

“Look out!” shouted the bartender. “He’s got a knife!” Then, seeing
that the two were disposed to join the fray, he made another rush at
Jurgis, and knocked aside his feeble defense and sent him tumbling
again; and the three flung themselves upon him, rolling and kicking
about the place.

A second later a policeman dashed in, and the bartender yelled once
more—“Look out for his knife!” Jurgis had fought himself half to his
knees, when the policeman made a leap at him, and cracked him across
the face with his club. Though the blow staggered him, the wild-beast
frenzy still blazed in him, and he got to his feet, lunging into the
air. Then again the club descended, full upon his head, and he dropped
like a log to the floor.

The policeman crouched over him, clutching his stick, waiting for him
to try to rise again; and meantime the barkeeper got up, and put his
hand to his head. “Christ!” he said, “I thought I was done for that
time. Did he cut me?”

“Don’t see anything, Jake,” said the policeman. “What’s the matter with
him?”

“Just crazy drunk,” said the other. “A lame duck, too—but he ’most got
me under the bar. Youse had better call the wagon, Billy.”

“No,” said the officer. “He’s got no more fight in him, I guess—and
he’s only got a block to go.” He twisted his hand in Jurgis’s collar
and jerked at him. “Git up here, you!” he commanded.

But Jurgis did not move, and the bartender went behind the bar, and
after stowing the hundred-dollar bill away in a safe hiding place, came
and poured a glass of water over Jurgis. Then, as the latter began to
moan feebly, the policeman got him to his feet and dragged him out of
the place. The station house was just around the corner, and so in a
few minutes Jurgis was in a cell.

He spent half the night lying unconscious, and the balance moaning in
torment, with a blinding headache and a racking thirst. Now and then he
cried aloud for a drink of water, but there was no one to hear him.
There were others in that same station house with split heads and a
fever; there were hundreds of them in the great city, and tens of
thousands of them in the great land, and there was no one to hear any
of them.

In the morning Jurgis was given a cup of water and a piece of bread,
and then hustled into a patrol wagon and driven to the nearest police
court. He sat in the pen with a score of others until his turn came.

The bartender—who proved to be a well-known bruiser—was called to the
stand. He took the oath and told his story. The prisoner had come into
his saloon after midnight, fighting drunk, and had ordered a glass of
beer and tendered a dollar bill in payment. He had been given
ninety-five cents’ change, and had demanded ninety-nine dollars more,
and before the plaintiff could even answer had hurled the glass at him
and then attacked him with a bottle of bitters, and nearly wrecked the
place.

Then the prisoner was sworn—a forlorn object, haggard and unshorn, with
an arm done up in a filthy bandage, a cheek and head cut, and bloody,
and one eye purplish black and entirely closed. “What have you to say
for yourself?” queried the magistrate.

“Your Honor,” said Jurgis, “I went into his place and asked the man if
he could change me a hundred-dollar bill. And he said he would if I
bought a drink. I gave him the bill and then he wouldn’t give me the
change.”

The magistrate was staring at him in perplexity. “You gave him a
hundred-dollar bill!” he exclaimed.

“Yes, your Honor,” said Jurgis.

“Where did you get it?”

“A man gave it to me, your Honor.”

“A man? What man, and what for?”

“A young man I met upon the street, your Honor. I had been begging.”

There was a titter in the courtroom; the officer who was holding Jurgis
put up his hand to hide a smile, and the magistrate smiled without
trying to hide it. “It’s true, your Honor!” cried Jurgis, passionately.

“You had been drinking as well as begging last night, had you not?”
inquired the magistrate. “No, your Honor—” protested Jurgis. “I—”

“You had not had anything to drink?”

“Why, yes, your Honor, I had—”

“What did you have?”

“I had a bottle of something—I don’t know what it was—something that
burned—”

There was again a laugh round the courtroom, stopping suddenly as the
magistrate looked up and frowned. “Have you ever been arrested before?”
he asked abruptly.

The question took Jurgis aback. “I—I—” he stammered.

“Tell me the truth, now!” commanded the other, sternly.

“Yes, your Honor,” said Jurgis.

“How often?”

“Only once, your Honor.”

“What for?”

“For knocking down my boss, your Honor. I was working in the
stockyards, and he—”

“I see,” said his Honor; “I guess that will do. You ought to stop
drinking if you can’t control yourself. Ten days and costs. Next case.”

Jurgis gave vent to a cry of dismay, cut off suddenly by the policeman,
who seized him by the collar. He was jerked out of the way, into a room
with the convicted prisoners, where he sat and wept like a child in his
impotent rage. It seemed monstrous to him that policemen and judges
should esteem his word as nothing in comparison with the
bartender’s—poor Jurgis could not know that the owner of the saloon
paid five dollars each week to the policeman alone for Sunday
privileges and general favors—nor that the pugilist bartender was one
of the most trusted henchmen of the Democratic leader of the district,
and had helped only a few months before to hustle out a record-breaking
vote as a testimonial to the magistrate, who had been made the target
of odious kid-gloved reformers.

Jurgis was driven out to the Bridewell for the second time. In his
tumbling around he had hurt his arm again, and so could not work, but
had to be attended by the physician. Also his head and his eye had to
be tied up—and so he was a pretty-looking object when, the second day
after his arrival, he went out into the exercise court and
encountered—Jack Duane!

The young fellow was so glad to see Jurgis that he almost hugged him.
“By God, if it isn’t ‘the Stinker’!” he cried. “And what is it—have you
been through a sausage machine?”

“No,” said Jurgis, “but I’ve been in a railroad wreck and a fight.” And
then, while some of the other prisoners gathered round he told his wild
story; most of them were incredulous, but Duane knew that Jurgis could
never have made up such a yarn as that.

“Hard luck, old man,” he said, when they were alone; “but maybe it’s
taught you a lesson.”

“I’ve learned some things since I saw you last,” said Jurgis
mournfully. Then he explained how he had spent the last summer,
“hoboing it,” as the phrase was. “And you?” he asked finally. “Have you
been here ever since?”

“Lord, no!” said the other. “I only came in the day before yesterday.
It’s the second time they’ve sent me up on a trumped-up charge—I’ve had
hard luck and can’t pay them what they want. Why don’t you quit Chicago
with me, Jurgis?”

“I’ve no place to go,” said Jurgis, sadly.

“Neither have I,” replied the other, laughing lightly. “But we’ll wait
till we get out and see.”

In the Bridewell Jurgis met few who had been there the last time, but
he met scores of others, old and young, of exactly the same sort. It
was like breakers upon a beach; there was new water, but the wave
looked just the same. He strolled about and talked with them, and the
biggest of them told tales of their prowess, while those who were
weaker, or younger and inexperienced, gathered round and listened in
admiring silence. The last time he was there, Jurgis had thought of
little but his family; but now he was free to listen to these men, and
to realize that he was one of them—that their point of view was his
point of view, and that the way they kept themselves alive in the world
was the way he meant to do it in the future.

And so, when he was turned out of prison again, without a penny in his
pocket, he went straight to Jack Duane. He went full of humility and
gratitude; for Duane was a gentleman, and a man with a profession—and
it was remarkable that he should be willing to throw in his lot with a
humble workingman, one who had even been a beggar and a tramp. Jurgis
could not see what help he could be to him; but he did not understand
that a man like himself—who could be trusted to stand by any one who
was kind to him—was as rare among criminals as among any other class of
men.

The address Jurgis had was a garret room in the Ghetto district, the
home of a pretty little French girl, Duane’s mistress, who sewed all
day, and eked out her living by prostitution. He had gone elsewhere,
she told Jurgis—he was afraid to stay there now, on account of the
police. The new address was a cellar dive, whose proprietor said that
he had never heard of Duane; but after he had put Jurgis through a
catechism he showed him a back stairs which led to a “fence” in the
rear of a pawnbroker’s shop, and thence to a number of assignation
rooms, in one of which Duane was hiding.

Duane was glad to see him; he was without a cent of money, he said, and
had been waiting for Jurgis to help him get some. He explained his
plan—in fact he spent the day in laying bare to his friend the criminal
world of the city, and in showing him how he might earn himself a
living in it. That winter he would have a hard time, on account of his
arm, and because of an unwonted fit of activity of the police; but so
long as he was unknown to them he would be safe if he were careful.
Here at “Papa” Hanson’s (so they called the old man who kept the dive)
he might rest at ease, for “Papa” Hanson was “square”—would stand by
him so long as he paid, and gave him an hour’s notice if there were to
be a police raid. Also Rosensteg, the pawnbroker, would buy anything he
had for a third of its value, and guarantee to keep it hidden for a
year.

There was an oil stove in the little cupboard of a room, and they had
some supper; and then about eleven o’clock at night they sallied forth
together, by a rear entrance to the place, Duane armed with a
slingshot. They came to a residence district, and he sprang up a
lamppost and blew out the light, and then the two dodged into the
shelter of an area step and hid in silence.

Pretty soon a man came by, a workingman—and they let him go. Then after
a long interval came the heavy tread of a policeman, and they held
their breath till he was gone. Though half-frozen, they waited a full
quarter of an hour after that—and then again came footsteps, walking
briskly. Duane nudged Jurgis, and the instant the man had passed they
rose up. Duane stole out as silently as a shadow, and a second later
Jurgis heard a thud and a stifled cry. He was only a couple of feet
behind, and he leaped to stop the man’s mouth, while Duane held him
fast by the arms, as they had agreed. But the man was limp and showed a
tendency to fall, and so Jurgis had only to hold him by the collar,
while the other, with swift fingers, went through his pockets,—ripping
open, first his overcoat, and then his coat, and then his vest,
searching inside and outside, and transferring the contents into his
own pockets. At last, after feeling of the man’s fingers and in his
necktie, Duane whispered, “That’s all!” and they dragged him to the
area and dropped him in. Then Jurgis went one way and his friend the
other, walking briskly.

The latter arrived first, and Jurgis found him examining the “swag.”
There was a gold watch, for one thing, with a chain and locket; there
was a silver pencil, and a matchbox, and a handful of small change, and
finally a card-case. This last Duane opened feverishly—there were
letters and checks, and two theater-tickets, and at last, in the back
part, a wad of bills. He counted them—there was a twenty, five tens,
four fives, and three ones. Duane drew a long breath. “That lets us
out!” he said.

After further examination, they burned the card-case and its contents,
all but the bills, and likewise the picture of a little girl in the
locket. Then Duane took the watch and trinkets downstairs, and came
back with sixteen dollars. “The old scoundrel said the case was
filled,” he said. “It’s a lie, but he knows I want the money.”

They divided up the spoils, and Jurgis got as his share fifty-five
dollars and some change. He protested that it was too much, but the
other had agreed to divide even. That was a good haul, he said, better
than average.

When they got up in the morning, Jurgis was sent out to buy a paper;
one of the pleasures of committing a crime was the reading about it
afterward. “I had a pal that always did it,” Duane remarked,
laughing—“until one day he read that he had left three thousand dollars
in a lower inside pocket of his party’s vest!”

There was a half-column account of the robbery—it was evident that a
gang was operating in the neighborhood, said the paper, for it was the
third within a week, and the police were apparently powerless. The
victim was an insurance agent, and he had lost a hundred and ten
dollars that did not belong to him. He had chanced to have his name
marked on his shirt, otherwise he would not have been identified yet.
His assailant had hit him too hard, and he was suffering from
concussion of the brain; and also he had been half-frozen when found,
and would lose three fingers on his right hand. The enterprising
newspaper reporter had taken all this information to his family, and
told how they had received it.

Since it was Jurgis’s first experience, these details naturally caused
him some worriment; but the other laughed coolly—it was the way of the
game, and there was no helping it. Before long Jurgis would think no
more of it than they did in the yards of knocking out a bullock. “It’s
a case of us or the other fellow, and I say the other fellow, every
time,” he observed.

“Still,” said Jurgis, reflectively, “he never did us any harm.”

“He was doing it to somebody as hard as he could, you can be sure of
that,” said his friend.

Duane had already explained to Jurgis that if a man of their trade were
known he would have to work all the time to satisfy the demands of the
police. Therefore it would be better for Jurgis to stay in hiding and
never be seen in public with his pal. But Jurgis soon got very tired of
staying in hiding. In a couple of weeks he was feeling strong and
beginning to use his arm, and then he could not stand it any longer.
Duane, who had done a job of some sort by himself, and made a truce
with the powers, brought over Marie, his little French girl, to share
with him; but even that did not avail for long, and in the end he had
to give up arguing, and take Jurgis out and introduce him to the
saloons and “sporting houses” where the big crooks and “holdup men”
hung out.

And so Jurgis got a glimpse of the high-class criminal world of
Chicago. The city, which was owned by an oligarchy of business men,
being nominally ruled by the people, a huge army of graft was necessary
for the purpose of effecting the transfer of power. Twice a year, in
the spring and fall elections, millions of dollars were furnished by
the business men and expended by this army; meetings were held and
clever speakers were hired, bands played and rockets sizzled, tons of
documents and reservoirs of drinks were distributed, and tens of
thousands of votes were bought for cash. And this army of graft had, of
course, to be maintained the year round. The leaders and organizers
were maintained by the business men directly—aldermen and legislators
by means of bribes, party officials out of the campaign funds,
lobbyists and corporation lawyers in the form of salaries, contractors
by means of jobs, labor union leaders by subsidies, and newspaper
proprietors and editors by advertisements. The rank and file, however,
were either foisted upon the city, or else lived off the population
directly. There was the police department, and the fire and water
departments, and the whole balance of the civil list, from the meanest
office boy to the head of a city department; and for the horde who
could find no room in these, there was the world of vice and crime,
there was license to seduce, to swindle and plunder and prey. The law
forbade Sunday drinking; and this had delivered the saloon-keepers into
the hands of the police, and made an alliance between them necessary.
The law forbade prostitution; and this had brought the “madames” into
the combination. It was the same with the gambling-house keeper and the
poolroom man, and the same with any other man or woman who had a means
of getting “graft,” and was willing to pay over a share of it: the
green-goods man and the highwayman, the pickpocket and the sneak thief,
and the receiver of stolen goods, the seller of adulterated milk, of
stale fruit and diseased meat, the proprietor of unsanitary tenements,
the fake doctor and the usurer, the beggar and the “pushcart man,” the
prize fighter and the professional slugger, the race-track “tout,” the
procurer, the white-slave agent, and the expert seducer of young girls.
All of these agencies of corruption were banded together, and leagued
in blood brotherhood with the politician and the police; more often
than not they were one and the same person,—the police captain would
own the brothel he pretended to raid, the politician would open his
headquarters in his saloon. “Hinkydink” or “Bathhouse John,” or others
of that ilk, were proprietors of the most notorious dives in Chicago,
and also the “gray wolves” of the city council, who gave away the
streets of the city to the business men; and those who patronized their
places were the gamblers and prize fighters who set the law at
defiance, and the burglars and holdup men who kept the whole city in
terror. On election day all these powers of vice and crime were one
power; they could tell within one per cent what the vote of their
district would be, and they could change it at an hour’s notice.

A month ago Jurgis had all but perished of starvation upon the streets;
and now suddenly, as by the gift of a magic key, he had entered into a
world where money and all the good things of life came freely. He was
introduced by his friend to an Irishman named “Buck” Halloran, who was
a political “worker” and on the inside of things. This man talked with
Jurgis for a while, and then told him that he had a little plan by
which a man who looked like a workingman might make some easy money;
but it was a private affair, and had to be kept quiet. Jurgis expressed
himself as agreeable, and the other took him that afternoon (it was
Saturday) to a place where city laborers were being paid off. The
paymaster sat in a little booth, with a pile of envelopes before him,
and two policemen standing by. Jurgis went, according to directions,
and gave the name of “Michael O’Flaherty,” and received an envelope,
which he took around the corner and delivered to Halloran, who was
waiting for him in a saloon. Then he went again; and gave the name of
“Johann Schmidt,” and a third time, and give the name of “Serge
Reminitsky.” Halloran had quite a list of imaginary workingmen, and
Jurgis got an envelope for each one. For this work he received five
dollars, and was told that he might have it every week, so long as he
kept quiet. As Jurgis was excellent at keeping quiet, he soon won the
trust of “Buck” Halloran, and was introduced to others as a man who
could be depended upon.

This acquaintance was useful to him in another way, also before long
Jurgis made his discovery of the meaning of “pull,” and just why his
boss, Connor, and also the pugilist bartender, had been able to send
him to jail. One night there was given a ball, the “benefit” of
“One-eyed Larry,” a lame man who played the violin in one of the big
“high-class” houses of prostitution on Clark Street, and was a wag and
a popular character on the “Lêvée.” This ball was held in a big dance
hall, and was one of the occasions when the city’s powers of debauchery
gave themselves up to madness. Jurgis attended and got half insane with
drink, and began quarreling over a girl; his arm was pretty strong by
then, and he set to work to clean out the place, and ended in a cell in
the police station. The police station being crowded to the doors, and
stinking with “bums,” Jurgis did not relish staying there to sleep off
his liquor, and sent for Halloran, who called up the district leader
and had Jurgis bailed out by telephone at four o’clock in the morning.
When he was arraigned that same morning, the district leader had
already seen the clerk of the court and explained that Jurgis Rudkus
was a decent fellow, who had been indiscreet; and so Jurgis was fined
ten dollars and the fine was “suspended”—which meant that he did not
have to pay for it, and never would have to pay it, unless somebody
chose to bring it up against him in the future.

Among the people Jurgis lived with now money was valued according to an
entirely different standard from that of the people of Packingtown;
yet, strange as it may seem, he did a great deal less drinking than he
had as a workingman. He had not the same provocations of exhaustion and
hopelessness; he had now something to work for, to struggle for. He
soon found that if he kept his wits about him, he would come upon new
opportunities; and being naturally an active man, he not only kept
sober himself, but helped to steady his friend, who was a good deal
fonder of both wine and women than he.

One thing led to another. In the saloon where Jurgis met “Buck”
Halloran he was sitting late one night with Duane, when a “country
customer” (a buyer for an out-of-town merchant) came in, a little more
than half “piped.” There was no one else in the place but the
bartender, and as the man went out again Jurgis and Duane followed him;
he went round the corner, and in a dark place made by a combination of
the elevated railroad and an unrented building, Jurgis leaped forward
and shoved a revolver under his nose, while Duane, with his hat pulled
over his eyes, went through the man’s pockets with lightning fingers.
They got his watch and his “wad,” and were round the corner again and
into the saloon before he could shout more than once. The bartender, to
whom they had tipped the wink, had the cellar door open for them, and
they vanished, making their way by a secret entrance to a brothel next
door. From the roof of this there was access to three similar places
beyond. By means of these passages the customers of any one place could
be gotten out of the way, in case a falling out with the police chanced
to lead to a raid; and also it was necessary to have a way of getting a
girl out of reach in case of an emergency. Thousands of them came to
Chicago answering advertisements for “servants” and “factory hands,”
and found themselves trapped by fake employment agencies, and locked up
in a bawdy-house. It was generally enough to take all their clothes
away from them; but sometimes they would have to be “doped” and kept
prisoners for weeks; and meantime their parents might be telegraphing
the police, and even coming on to see why nothing was done.
Occasionally there was no way of satisfying them but to let them search
the place to which the girl had been traced.

For his help in this little job, the bartender received twenty out of
the hundred and thirty odd dollars that the pair secured; and naturally
this put them on friendly terms with him, and a few days later he
introduced them to a little “sheeny” named Goldberger, one of the
“runners” of the “sporting house” where they had been hidden. After a
few drinks Goldberger began, with some hesitation, to narrate how he
had had a quarrel over his best girl with a professional “cardsharp,”
who had hit him in the jaw. The fellow was a stranger in Chicago, and
if he was found some night with his head cracked there would be no one
to care very much. Jurgis, who by this time would cheerfully have
cracked the heads of all the gamblers in Chicago, inquired what would
be coming to him; at which the Jew became still more confidential, and
said that he had some tips on the New Orleans races, which he got
direct from the police captain of the district, whom he had got out of
a bad scrape, and who “stood in” with a big syndicate of horse owners.
Duane took all this in at once, but Jurgis had to have the whole
race-track situation explained to him before he realized the importance
of such an opportunity.

There was the gigantic Racing Trust. It owned the legislatures in every
state in which it did business; it even owned some of the big
newspapers, and made public opinion—there was no power in the land that
could oppose it unless, perhaps, it were the Poolroom Trust. It built
magnificent racing parks all over the country, and by means of enormous
purses it lured the people to come, and then it organized a gigantic
shell game, whereby it plundered them of hundreds of millions of
dollars every year. Horse racing had once been a sport, but nowadays it
was a business; a horse could be “doped” and doctored, undertrained or
overtrained; it could be made to fall at any moment—or its gait could
be broken by lashing it with the whip, which all the spectators would
take to be a desperate effort to keep it in the lead. There were scores
of such tricks; and sometimes it was the owners who played them and
made fortunes, sometimes it was the jockeys and trainers, sometimes it
was outsiders, who bribed them—but most of the time it was the chiefs
of the trust. Now for instance, they were having winter racing in New
Orleans and a syndicate was laying out each day’s program in advance,
and its agents in all the Northern cities were “milking” the poolrooms.
The word came by long-distance telephone in a cipher code, just a
little while before each race; and any man who could get the secret had
as good as a fortune. If Jurgis did not believe it, he could try it,
said the little Jew—let them meet at a certain house on the morrow and
make a test. Jurgis was willing, and so was Duane, and so they went to
one of the high-class poolrooms where brokers and merchants gambled
(with society women in a private room), and they put up ten dollars
each upon a horse called “Black Beldame,” a six to one shot, and won.
For a secret like that they would have done a good many sluggings—but
the next day Goldberger informed them that the offending gambler had
got wind of what was coming to him, and had skipped the town.

There were ups and downs at the business; but there was always a
living, inside of a jail, if not out of it. Early in April the city
elections were due, and that meant prosperity for all the powers of
graft. Jurgis, hanging round in dives and gambling houses and brothels,
met with the heelers of both parties, and from their conversation he
came to understand all the ins and outs of the game, and to hear of a
number of ways in which he could make himself useful about election
time. “Buck” Halloran was a “Democrat,” and so Jurgis became a Democrat
also; but he was not a bitter one—the Republicans were good fellows,
too, and were to have a pile of money in this next campaign. At the
last election the Republicans had paid four dollars a vote to the
Democrats’ three; and “Buck” Halloran sat one night playing cards with
Jurgis and another man, who told how Halloran had been charged with the
job voting a “bunch” of thirty-seven newly landed Italians, and how he,
the narrator, had met the Republican worker who was after the very same
gang, and how the three had effected a bargain, whereby the Italians
were to vote half and half, for a glass of beer apiece, while the
balance of the fund went to the conspirators!

Not long after this, Jurgis, wearying of the risks and vicissitudes of
miscellaneous crime, was moved to give up the career for that of a
politician. Just at this time there was a tremendous uproar being
raised concerning the alliance between the criminals and the police.
For the criminal graft was one in which the business men had no direct
part—it was what is called a “side line,” carried by the police. “Wide
open” gambling and debauchery made the city pleasing to “trade,” but
burglaries and holdups did not. One night it chanced that while Jack
Duane was drilling a safe in a clothing store he was caught red-handed
by the night watchman, and turned over to a policeman, who chanced to
know him well, and who took the responsibility of letting him make his
escape. Such a howl from the newspapers followed this that Duane was
slated for sacrifice, and barely got out of town in time. And just at
that juncture it happened that Jurgis was introduced to a man named
Harper whom he recognized as the night watchman at Brown’s, who had
been instrumental in making him an American citizen, the first year of
his arrival at the yards. The other was interested in the coincidence,
but did not remember Jurgis—he had handled too many “green ones” in his
time, he said. He sat in a dance hall with Jurgis and Halloran until
one or two in the morning, exchanging experiences. He had a long story
to tell of his quarrel with the superintendent of his department, and
how he was now a plain workingman, and a good union man as well. It was
not until some months afterward that Jurgis understood that the quarrel
with the superintendent had been prearranged, and that Harper was in
reality drawing a salary of twenty dollars a week from the packers for
an inside report of his union’s secret proceedings. The yards were
seething with agitation just then, said the man, speaking as a
unionist. The people of Packingtown had borne about all that they would
bear, and it looked as if a strike might begin any week.

After this talk the man made inquiries concerning Jurgis, and a couple
of days later he came to him with an interesting proposition. He was
not absolutely certain, he said, but he thought that he could get him a
regular salary if he would come to Packingtown and do as he was told,
and keep his mouth shut. Harper—“Bush” Harper, he was called—was a
right-hand man of Mike Scully, the Democratic boss of the stockyards;
and in the coming election there was a peculiar situation. There had
come to Scully a proposition to nominate a certain rich brewer who
lived upon a swell boulevard that skirted the district, and who coveted
the big badge and the “honorable” of an alderman. The brewer was a Jew,
and had no brains, but he was harmless, and would put up a rare
campaign fund. Scully had accepted the offer, and then gone to the
Republicans with a proposition. He was not sure that he could manage
the “sheeny,” and he did not mean to take any chances with his
district; let the Republicans nominate a certain obscure but amiable
friend of Scully’s, who was now setting tenpins in the cellar of an
Ashland Avenue saloon, and he, Scully, would elect him with the
“sheeny’s” money, and the Republicans might have the glory, which was
more than they would get otherwise. In return for this the Republicans
would agree to put up no candidate the following year, when Scully
himself came up for reelection as the other alderman from the ward. To
this the Republicans had assented at once; but the hell of it was—so
Harper explained—that the Republicans were all of them fools—a man had
to be a fool to be a Republican in the stockyards, where Scully was
king. And they didn’t know how to work, and of course it would not do
for the Democratic workers, the noble redskins of the War Whoop League,
to support the Republican openly. The difficulty would not have been so
great except for another fact—there had been a curious development in
stockyards politics in the last year or two, a new party having leaped
into being. They were the Socialists; and it was a devil of a mess,
said “Bush” Harper. The one image which the word “Socialist” brought to
Jurgis was of poor little Tamoszius Kuszleika, who had called himself
one, and would go out with a couple of other men and a soap-box, and
shout himself hoarse on a street corner Saturday nights. Tamoszius had
tried to explain to Jurgis what it was all about, but Jurgis, who was
not of an imaginative turn, had never quite got it straight; at present
he was content with his companion’s explanation that the Socialists
were the enemies of American institutions—could not be bought, and
would not combine or make any sort of a “dicker.” Mike Scully was very
much worried over the opportunity which his last deal gave to them—the
stockyards Democrats were furious at the idea of a rich capitalist for
their candidate, and while they were changing they might possibly
conclude that a Socialist firebrand was preferable to a Republican bum.
And so right here was a chance for Jurgis to make himself a place in
the world, explained “Bush” Harper; he had been a union man, and he was
known in the yards as a workingman; he must have hundreds of
acquaintances, and as he had never talked politics with them he might
come out as a Republican now without exciting the least suspicion.
There were barrels of money for the use of those who could deliver the
goods; and Jurgis might count upon Mike Scully, who had never yet gone
back on a friend. Just what could he do? Jurgis asked, in some
perplexity, and the other explained in detail. To begin with, he would
have to go to the yards and work, and he mightn’t relish that; but he
would have what he earned, as well as the rest that came to him. He
would get active in the union again, and perhaps try to get an office,
as he, Harper, had; he would tell all his friends the good points of
Doyle, the Republican nominee, and the bad ones of the “sheeny”; and
then Scully would furnish a meeting place, and he would start the
“Young Men’s Republican Association,” or something of that sort, and
have the rich brewer’s best beer by the hogshead, and fireworks and
speeches, just like the War Whoop League. Surely Jurgis must know
hundreds of men who would like that sort of fun; and there would be the
regular Republican leaders and workers to help him out, and they would
deliver a big enough majority on election day.

When he had heard all this explanation to the end, Jurgis demanded:
“But how can I get a job in Packingtown? I’m blacklisted.”

At which “Bush” Harper laughed. “I’ll attend to that all right,” he
said.

And the other replied, “It’s a go, then; I’m your man.” So Jurgis went
out to the stockyards again, and was introduced to the political lord
of the district, the boss of Chicago’s mayor. It was Scully who owned
the brick-yards and the dump and the ice pond—though Jurgis did not
know it. It was Scully who was to blame for the unpaved street in which
Jurgis’s child had been drowned; it was Scully who had put into office
the magistrate who had first sent Jurgis to jail; it was Scully who was
principal stockholder in the company which had sold him the ramshackle
tenement, and then robbed him of it. But Jurgis knew none of these
things—any more than he knew that Scully was but a tool and puppet of
the packers. To him Scully was a mighty power, the “biggest” man he had
ever met.

He was a little, dried-up Irishman, whose hands shook. He had a brief
talk with his visitor, watching him with his ratlike eyes, and making
up his mind about him; and then he gave him a note to Mr. Harmon, one
of the head managers of Durham’s—

“The bearer, Jurgis Rudkus, is a particular friend of mine, and I would
like you to find him a good place, for important reasons. He was once
indiscreet, but you will perhaps be so good as to overlook that.”

Mr. Harmon looked up inquiringly when he read this. “What does he mean
by ‘indiscreet’?” he asked.

“I was blacklisted, sir,” said Jurgis.

At which the other frowned. “Blacklisted?” he said. “How do you mean?”
And Jurgis turned red with embarrassment.

He had forgotten that a blacklist did not exist. “I—that is—I had
difficulty in getting a place,” he stammered.

“What was the matter?”

“I got into a quarrel with a foreman—not my own boss, sir—and struck
him.”

“I see,” said the other, and meditated for a few moments. “What do you
wish to do?” he asked.

“Anything, sir,” said Jurgis—“only I had a broken arm this winter, and
so I have to be careful.”

“How would it suit you to be a night watchman?”

“That wouldn’t do, sir. I have to be among the men at night.”

“I see—politics. Well, would it suit you to trim hogs?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jurgis.

And Mr. Harmon called a timekeeper and said, “Take this man to Pat
Murphy and tell him to find room for him somehow.”

And so Jurgis marched into the hog-killing room, a place where, in the
days gone by, he had come begging for a job. Now he walked jauntily,
and smiled to himself, seeing the frown that came to the boss’s face as
the timekeeper said, “Mr. Harmon says to put this man on.” It would
overcrowd his department and spoil the record he was trying to make—but
he said not a word except “All right.”

And so Jurgis became a workingman once more; and straightway he sought
out his old friends, and joined the union, and began to “root” for
“Scotty” Doyle. Doyle had done him a good turn once, he explained, and
was really a bully chap; Doyle was a workingman himself, and would
represent the workingmen—why did they want to vote for a millionaire
“sheeny,” and what the hell had Mike Scully ever done for them that
they should back his candidates all the time? And meantime Scully had
given Jurgis a note to the Republican leader of the ward, and he had
gone there and met the crowd he was to work with. Already they had
hired a big hall, with some of the brewer’s money, and every night
Jurgis brought in a dozen new members of the “Doyle Republican
Association.” Pretty soon they had a grand opening night; and there was
a brass band, which marched through the streets, and fireworks and
bombs and red lights in front of the hall; and there was an enormous
crowd, with two overflow meetings—so that the pale and trembling
candidate had to recite three times over the little speech which one of
Scully’s henchmen had written, and which he had been a month learning
by heart. Best of all, the famous and eloquent Senator Spareshanks,
presidential candidate, rode out in an automobile to discuss the sacred
privileges of American citizenship, and protection and prosperity for
the American workingman. His inspiriting address was quoted to the
extent of half a column in all the morning newspapers, which also said
that it could be stated upon excellent authority that the unexpected
popularity developed by Doyle, the Republican candidate for alderman,
was giving great anxiety to Mr. Scully, the chairman of the Democratic
City Committee.

The chairman was still more worried when the monster torchlight
procession came off, with the members of the Doyle Republican
Association all in red capes and hats, and free beer for every voter in
the ward—the best beer ever given away in a political campaign, as the
whole electorate testified. During this parade, and at innumerable
cart-tail meetings as well, Jurgis labored tirelessly. He did not make
any speeches—there were lawyers and other experts for that—but he
helped to manage things; distributing notices and posting placards and
bringing out the crowds; and when the show was on he attended to the
fireworks and the beer. Thus in the course of the campaign he handled
many hundreds of dollars of the Hebrew brewer’s money, administering it
with naïve and touching fidelity. Toward the end, however, he learned
that he was regarded with hatred by the rest of the “boys,” because he
compelled them either to make a poorer showing than he or to do without
their share of the pie. After that Jurgis did his best to please them,
and to make up for the time he had lost before he discovered the extra
bungholes of the campaign barrel.

He pleased Mike Scully, also. On election morning he was out at four
o’clock, “getting out the vote”; he had a two-horse carriage to ride
in, and he went from house to house for his friends, and escorted them
in triumph to the polls. He voted half a dozen times himself, and voted
some of his friends as often; he brought bunch after bunch of the
newest foreigners—Lithuanians, Poles, Bohemians, Slovaks—and when he
had put them through the mill he turned them over to another man to
take to the next polling place. When Jurgis first set out, the captain
of the precinct gave him a hundred dollars, and three times in the
course of the day he came for another hundred, and not more than
twenty-five out of each lot got stuck in his own pocket. The balance
all went for actual votes, and on a day of Democratic landslides they
elected “Scotty” Doyle, the ex-tenpin setter, by nearly a thousand
plurality—and beginning at five o’clock in the afternoon, and ending at
three the next morning, Jurgis treated himself to a most unholy and
horrible “jag.” Nearly every one else in Packingtown did the same,
however, for there was universal exultation over this triumph of
popular government, this crushing defeat of an arrogant plutocrat by
the power of the common people.