The Jungle

fter the elections Jurgis stayed on in Packingtown and kept his job.
The agitation to break up the police protection of criminals was
continuing, and it seemed to him best to “lay low” for the present. He
had nearly three hundred dollars in the bank, and might have considered
himself entitled to a vacation; but he had an easy job, and force of
habit kept him at it. Besides, Mike Scully, whom he consulted, advised
him that something might “turn up” before long.

Jurgis got himself a place in a boardinghouse with some congenial
friends. He had already inquired of Aniele, and learned that Elzbieta
and her family had gone downtown, and so he gave no further thought to
them. He went with a new set, now, young unmarried fellows who were
“sporty.” Jurgis had long ago cast off his fertilizer clothing, and
since going into politics he had donned a linen collar and a greasy red
necktie. He had some reason for thinking of his dress, for he was
making about eleven dollars a week, and two-thirds of it he might spend
upon his pleasures without ever touching his savings.

Sometimes he would ride down-town with a party of friends to the cheap
theaters and the music halls and other haunts with which they were
familiar. Many of the saloons in Packingtown had pool tables, and some
of them bowling alleys, by means of which he could spend his evenings
in petty gambling. Also, there were cards and dice. One time Jurgis got
into a game on a Saturday night and won prodigiously, and because he
was a man of spirit he stayed in with the rest and the game continued
until late Sunday afternoon, and by that time he was “out” over twenty
dollars. On Saturday nights, also, a number of balls were generally
given in Packingtown; each man would bring his “girl” with him, paying
half a dollar for a ticket, and several dollars additional for drinks
in the course of the festivities, which continued until three or four
o’clock in the morning, unless broken up by fighting. During all this
time the same man and woman would dance together, half-stupefied with
sensuality and drink.

Before long Jurgis discovered what Scully had meant by something
“turning up.” In May the agreement between the packers and the unions
expired, and a new agreement had to be signed. Negotiations were going
on, and the yards were full of talk of a strike. The old scale had
dealt with the wages of the skilled men only; and of the members of the
Meat Workers’ Union about two-thirds were unskilled men. In Chicago
these latter were receiving, for the most part, eighteen and a half
cents an hour, and the unions wished to make this the general wage for
the next year. It was not nearly so large a wage as it seemed—in the
course of the negotiations the union officers examined time checks to
the amount of ten thousand dollars, and they found that the highest
wages paid had been fourteen dollars a week, and the lowest two dollars
and five cents, and the average of the whole, six dollars and
sixty-five cents. And six dollars and sixty-five cents was hardly too
much for a man to keep a family on, considering the fact that the price
of dressed meat had increased nearly fifty per cent in the last five
years, while the price of “beef on the hoof” had decreased as much, it
would have seemed that the packers ought to be able to pay it; but the
packers were unwilling to pay it—they rejected the union demand, and to
show what their purpose was, a week or two after the agreement expired
they put down the wages of about a thousand men to sixteen and a half
cents, and it was said that old man Jones had vowed he would put them
to fifteen before he got through. There were a million and a half of
men in the country looking for work, a hundred thousand of them right
in Chicago; and were the packers to let the union stewards march into
their places and bind them to a contract that would lose them several
thousand dollars a day for a year? Not much!

All this was in June; and before long the question was submitted to a
referendum in the unions, and the decision was for a strike. It was the
same in all the packing house cities; and suddenly the newspapers and
public woke up to face the gruesome spectacle of a meat famine. All
sorts of pleas for a reconsideration were made, but the packers were
obdurate; and all the while they were reducing wages, and heading off
shipments of cattle, and rushing in wagon-loads of mattresses and cots.
So the men boiled over, and one night telegrams went out from the union
headquarters to all the big packing centers—to St. Paul, South Omaha,
Sioux City, St. Joseph, Kansas City, East St. Louis, and New York—and
the next day at noon between fifty and sixty thousand men drew off
their working clothes and marched out of the factories, and the great
“Beef Strike” was on.

Jurgis went to his dinner, and afterward he walked over to see Mike
Scully, who lived in a fine house, upon a street which had been
decently paved and lighted for his especial benefit. Scully had gone
into semi-retirement, and looked nervous and worried. “What do you
want?” he demanded, when he saw Jurgis.

“I came to see if maybe you could get me a place during the strike,”
the other replied.

And Scully knit his brows and eyed him narrowly. In that morning’s
papers Jurgis had read a fierce denunciation of the packers by Scully,
who had declared that if they did not treat their people better the
city authorities would end the matter by tearing down their plants.
Now, therefore, Jurgis was not a little taken aback when the other
demanded suddenly, “See here, Rudkus, why don’t you stick by your job?”

Jurgis started. “Work as a scab?” he cried.

“Why not?” demanded Scully. “What’s that to you?”

“But—but—” stammered Jurgis. He had somehow taken it for granted that
he should go out with his union. “The packers need good men, and need
them bad,” continued the other, “and they’ll treat a man right that
stands by them. Why don’t you take your chance and fix yourself?”

“But,” said Jurgis, “how could I ever be of any use to you—in
politics?”

“You couldn’t be it anyhow,” said Scully, abruptly.

“Why not?” asked Jurgis.

“Hell, man!” cried the other. “Don’t you know you’re a Republican? And
do you think I’m always going to elect Republicans? My brewer has found
out already how we served him, and there is the deuce to pay.”

Jurgis looked dumfounded. He had never thought of that aspect of it
before. “I could be a Democrat,” he said.

“Yes,” responded the other, “but not right away; a man can’t change his
politics every day. And besides, I don’t need you—there’d be nothing
for you to do. And it’s a long time to election day, anyhow; and what
are you going to do meantime?”

“I thought I could count on you,” began Jurgis.

“Yes,” responded Scully, “so you could—I never yet went back on a
friend. But is it fair to leave the job I got you and come to me for
another? I have had a hundred fellows after me today, and what can I
do? I’ve put seventeen men on the city payroll to clean streets this
one week, and do you think I can keep that up forever? It wouldn’t do
for me to tell other men what I tell you, but you’ve been on the
inside, and you ought to have sense enough to see for yourself. What
have you to gain by a strike?”

“I hadn’t thought,” said Jurgis.

“Exactly,” said Scully, “but you’d better. Take my word for it, the
strike will be over in a few days, and the men will be beaten; and
meantime what you can get out of it will belong to you. Do you see?”

And Jurgis saw. He went back to the yards, and into the workroom. The
men had left a long line of hogs in various stages of preparation, and
the foreman was directing the feeble efforts of a score or two of
clerks and stenographers and office boys to finish up the job and get
them into the chilling rooms. Jurgis went straight up to him and
announced, “I have come back to work, Mr. Murphy.”

The boss’s face lighted up. “Good man!” he cried. “Come ahead!”

“Just a moment,” said Jurgis, checking his enthusiasm. “I think I ought
to get a little more wages.”

“Yes,” replied the other, “of course. What do you want?”

Jurgis had debated on the way. His nerve almost failed him now, but he
clenched his hands. “I think I ought to have’ three dollars a day,” he
said.

“All right,” said the other, promptly; and before the day was out our
friend discovered that the clerks and stenographers and office boys
were getting five dollars a day, and then he could have kicked himself!

So Jurgis became one of the new “American heroes,” a man whose virtues
merited comparison with those of the martyrs of Lexington and Valley
Forge. The resemblance was not complete, of course, for Jurgis was
generously paid and comfortably clad, and was provided with a spring
cot and a mattress and three substantial meals a day; also he was
perfectly at ease, and safe from all peril of life and limb, save only
in the case that a desire for beer should lead him to venture outside
of the stockyards gates. And even in the exercise of this privilege he
was not left unprotected; a good part of the inadequate police force of
Chicago was suddenly diverted from its work of hunting criminals, and
rushed out to serve him. The police, and the strikers also, were
determined that there should be no violence; but there was another
party interested which was minded to the contrary—and that was the
press. On the first day of his life as a strikebreaker Jurgis quit work
early, and in a spirit of bravado he challenged three men of his
acquaintance to go outside and get a drink. They accepted, and went
through the big Halsted Street gate, where several policemen were
watching, and also some union pickets, scanning sharply those who
passed in and out. Jurgis and his companions went south on Halsted
Street; past the hotel, and then suddenly half a dozen men started
across the street toward them and proceeded to argue with them
concerning the error of their ways. As the arguments were not taken in
the proper spirit, they went on to threats; and suddenly one of them
jerked off the hat of one of the four and flung it over the fence. The
man started after it, and then, as a cry of “Scab!” was raised and a
dozen people came running out of saloons and doorways, a second man’s
heart failed him and he followed. Jurgis and the fourth stayed long
enough to give themselves the satisfaction of a quick exchange of
blows, and then they, too, took to their heels and fled back of the
hotel and into the yards again. Meantime, of course, policemen were
coming on a run, and as a crowd gathered other police got excited and
sent in a riot call. Jurgis knew nothing of this, but went back to
“Packers’ Avenue,” and in front of the “Central Time Station” he saw
one of his companions, breathless and wild with excitement, narrating
to an ever growing throng how the four had been attacked and surrounded
by a howling mob, and had been nearly torn to pieces. While he stood
listening, smiling cynically, several dapper young men stood by with
notebooks in their hands, and it was not more than two hours later that
Jurgis saw newsboys running about with armfuls of newspapers, printed
in red and black letters six inches high:

VIOLENCE IN THE YARDS! STRIKEBREAKERS SURROUNDED BY FRENZIED MOB!

If he had been able to buy all of the newspapers of the United States
the next morning, he might have discovered that his beer-hunting
exploit was being perused by some two score millions of people, and had
served as a text for editorials in half the staid and solemn
business-men’s newspapers in the land.

Jurgis was to see more of this as time passed. For the present, his
work being over, he was free to ride into the city, by a railroad
direct from the yards, or else to spend the night in a room where cots
had been laid in rows. He chose the latter, but to his regret, for all
night long gangs of strikebreakers kept arriving. As very few of the
better class of workingmen could be got for such work, these specimens
of the new American hero contained an assortment of the criminals and
thugs of the city, besides Negroes and the lowest foreigners—Greeks,
Roumanians, Sicilians, and Slovaks. They had been attracted more by the
prospect of disorder than by the big wages; and they made the night
hideous with singing and carousing, and only went to sleep when the
time came for them to get up to work.

In the morning before Jurgis had finished his breakfast, “Pat” Murphy
ordered him to one of the superintendents, who questioned him as to his
experience in the work of the killing room. His heart began to thump
with excitement, for he divined instantly that his hour had come—that
he was to be a boss!

Some of the foremen were union members, and many who were not had gone
out with the men. It was in the killing department that the packers had
been left most in the lurch, and precisely here that they could least
afford it; the smoking and canning and salting of meat might wait, and
all the by-products might be wasted—but fresh meats must be had, or the
restaurants and hotels and brownstone houses would feel the pinch, and
then “public opinion” would take a startling turn.

An opportunity such as this would not come twice to a man; and Jurgis
seized it. Yes, he knew the work, the whole of it, and he could teach
it to others. But if he took the job and gave satisfaction he would
expect to keep it—they would not turn him off at the end of the strike?
To which the superintendent replied that he might safely trust Durham’s
for that—they proposed to teach these unions a lesson, and most of all
those foremen who had gone back on them. Jurgis would receive five
dollars a day during the strike, and twenty-five a week after it was
settled.

So our friend got a pair of “slaughter pen” boots and “jeans,” and
flung himself at his task. It was a weird sight, there on the killing
beds—a throng of stupid black Negroes, and foreigners who could not
understand a word that was said to them, mixed with pale-faced,
hollow-chested bookkeepers and clerks, half-fainting for the tropical
heat and the sickening stench of fresh blood—and all struggling to
dress a dozen or two cattle in the same place where, twenty-four hours
ago, the old killing gang had been speeding, with their marvelous
precision, turning out four hundred carcasses every hour!

The Negroes and the “toughs” from the Lêvée did not want to work, and
every few minutes some of them would feel obliged to retire and
recuperate. In a couple of days Durham and Company had electric fans up
to cool off the rooms for them, and even couches for them to rest on;
and meantime they could go out and find a shady corner and take a
“snooze,” and as there was no place for any one in particular, and no
system, it might be hours before their boss discovered them. As for the
poor office employees, they did their best, moved to it by terror;
thirty of them had been “fired” in a bunch that first morning for
refusing to serve, besides a number of women clerks and typewriters who
had declined to act as waitresses.

It was such a force as this that Jurgis had to organize. He did his
best, flying here and there, placing them in rows and showing them the
tricks; he had never given an order in his life before, but he had
taken enough of them to know, and he soon fell into the spirit of it,
and roared and stormed like any old stager. He had not the most
tractable pupils, however. “See hyar, boss,” a big black “buck” would
begin, “ef you doan’ like de way Ah does dis job, you kin get somebody
else to do it.” Then a crowd would gather and listen, muttering
threats. After the first meal nearly all the steel knives had been
missing, and now every Negro had one, ground to a fine point, hidden in
his boots.

There was no bringing order out of such a chaos, Jurgis soon
discovered; and he fell in with the spirit of the thing—there was no
reason why he should wear himself out with shouting. If hides and guts
were slashed and rendered useless there was no way of tracing it to any
one; and if a man lay off and forgot to come back there was nothing to
be gained by seeking him, for all the rest would quit in the meantime.
Everything went, during the strike, and the packers paid. Before long
Jurgis found that the custom of resting had suggested to some alert
minds the possibility of registering at more than one place and earning
more than one five dollars a day. When he caught a man at this he
“fired” him, but it chanced to be in a quiet corner, and the man
tendered him a ten-dollar bill and a wink, and he took them. Of course,
before long this custom spread, and Jurgis was soon making quite a good
income from it.

In the face of handicaps such as these the packers counted themselves
lucky if they could kill off the cattle that had been crippled in
transit and the hogs that had developed disease. Frequently, in the
course of a two or three days’ trip, in hot weather and without water,
some hog would develop cholera, and die; and the rest would attack him
before he had ceased kicking, and when the car was opened there would
be nothing of him left but the bones. If all the hogs in this carload
were not killed at once, they would soon be down with the dread
disease, and there would be nothing to do but make them into lard. It
was the same with cattle that were gored and dying, or were limping
with broken bones stuck through their flesh—they must be killed, even
if brokers and buyers and superintendents had to take off their coats
and help drive and cut and skin them. And meantime, agents of the
packers were gathering gangs of Negroes in the country districts of the
far South, promising them five dollars a day and board, and being
careful not to mention there was a strike; already carloads of them
were on the way, with special rates from the railroads, and all traffic
ordered out of the way. Many towns and cities were taking advantage of
the chance to clear out their jails and workhouses—in Detroit the
magistrates would release every man who agreed to leave town within
twenty-four hours, and agents of the packers were in the courtrooms to
ship them right. And meantime trainloads of supplies were coming in for
their accommodation, including beer and whisky, so that they might not
be tempted to go outside. They hired thirty young girls in Cincinnati
to “pack fruit,” and when they arrived put them at work canning corned
beef, and put cots for them to sleep in a public hallway, through which
the men passed. As the gangs came in day and night, under the escort of
squads of police, they stowed away in unused workrooms and storerooms,
and in the car sheds, crowded so closely together that the cots
touched. In some places they would use the same room for eating and
sleeping, and at night the men would put their cots upon the tables, to
keep away from the swarms of rats.

But with all their best efforts, the packers were demoralized. Ninety
per cent of the men had walked out; and they faced the task of
completely remaking their labor force—and with the price of meat up
thirty per cent, and the public clamoring for a settlement. They made
an offer to submit the whole question at issue to arbitration; and at
the end of ten days the unions accepted it, and the strike was called
off. It was agreed that all the men were to be re-employed within
forty-five days, and that there was to be “no discrimination against
union men.”

This was an anxious time for Jurgis. If the men were taken back
“without discrimination,” he would lose his present place. He sought
out the superintendent, who smiled grimly and bade him “wait and see.”
Durham’s strikebreakers were few of them leaving.

Whether or not the “settlement” was simply a trick of the packers to
gain time, or whether they really expected to break the strike and
cripple the unions by the plan, cannot be said; but that night there
went out from the office of Durham and Company a telegram to all the
big packing centers, “Employ no union leaders.” And in the morning,
when the twenty thousand men thronged into the yards, with their dinner
pails and working clothes, Jurgis stood near the door of the
hog-trimming room, where he had worked before the strike, and saw a
throng of eager men, with a score or two of policemen watching them;
and he saw a superintendent come out and walk down the line, and pick
out man after man that pleased him; and one after another came, and
there were some men up near the head of the line who were never
picked—they being the union stewards and delegates, and the men Jurgis
had heard making speeches at the meetings. Each time, of course, there
were louder murmurings and angrier looks. Over where the cattle
butchers were waiting, Jurgis heard shouts and saw a crowd, and he
hurried there. One big butcher, who was president of the Packing Trades
Council, had been passed over five times, and the men were wild with
rage; they had appointed a committee of three to go in and see the
superintendent, and the committee had made three attempts, and each
time the police had clubbed them back from the door. Then there were
yells and hoots, continuing until at last the superintendent came to
the door. “We all go back or none of us do!” cried a hundred voices.
And the other shook his fist at them, and shouted, “You went out of
here like cattle, and like cattle you’ll come back!”

Then suddenly the big butcher president leaped upon a pile of stones
and yelled: “It’s off, boys. We’ll all of us quit again!” And so the
cattle butchers declared a new strike on the spot; and gathering their
members from the other plants, where the same trick had been played,
they marched down Packers’ Avenue, which was thronged with a dense mass
of workers, cheering wildly. Men who had already got to work on the
killing beds dropped their tools and joined them; some galloped here
and there on horseback, shouting the tidings, and within half an hour
the whole of Packingtown was on strike again, and beside itself with
fury.

There was quite a different tone in Packingtown after this—the place
was a seething caldron of passion, and the “scab” who ventured into it
fared badly. There were one or two of these incidents each day, the
newspapers detailing them, and always blaming them upon the unions. Yet
ten years before, when there were no unions in Packingtown, there was a
strike, and national troops had to be called, and there were pitched
battles fought at night, by the light of blazing freight trains.
Packingtown was always a center of violence; in “Whisky Point,” where
there were a hundred saloons and one glue factory, there was always
fighting, and always more of it in hot weather. Any one who had taken
the trouble to consult the station house blotter would have found that
there was less violence that summer than ever before—and this while
twenty thousand men were out of work, and with nothing to do all day
but brood upon bitter wrongs. There was no one to picture the battle
the union leaders were fighting—to hold this huge army in rank, to keep
it from straggling and pillaging, to cheer and encourage and guide a
hundred thousand people, of a dozen different tongues, through six long
weeks of hunger and disappointment and despair.

Meantime the packers had set themselves definitely to the task of
making a new labor force. A thousand or two of strikebreakers were
brought in every night, and distributed among the various plants. Some
of them were experienced workers,—butchers, salesmen, and managers from
the packers’ branch stores, and a few union men who had deserted from
other cities; but the vast majority were “green” Negroes from the
cotton districts of the far South, and they were herded into the
packing plants like sheep. There was a law forbidding the use of
buildings as lodginghouses unless they were licensed for the purpose,
and provided with proper windows, stairways, and fire escapes; but
here, in a “paint room,” reached only by an enclosed “chute,” a room
without a single window and only one door, a hundred men were crowded
upon mattresses on the floor. Up on the third story of the “hog house”
of Jones’s was a storeroom, without a window, into which they crowded
seven hundred men, sleeping upon the bare springs of cots, and with a
second shift to use them by day. And when the clamor of the public led
to an investigation into these conditions, and the mayor of the city
was forced to order the enforcement of the law, the packers got a judge
to issue an injunction forbidding him to do it!

Just at this time the mayor was boasting that he had put an end to
gambling and prize fighting in the city; but here a swarm of
professional gamblers had leagued themselves with the police to fleece
the strikebreakers; and any night, in the big open space in front of
Brown’s, one might see brawny Negroes stripped to the waist and
pounding each other for money, while a howling throng of three or four
thousand surged about, men and women, young white girls from the
country rubbing elbows with big buck Negroes with daggers in their
boots, while rows of woolly heads peered down from every window of the
surrounding factories. The ancestors of these black people had been
savages in Africa; and since then they had been chattel slaves, or had
been held down by a community ruled by the traditions of slavery. Now
for the first time they were free—free to gratify every passion, free
to wreck themselves. They were wanted to break a strike, and when it
was broken they would be shipped away, and their present masters would
never see them again; and so whisky and women were brought in by the
carload and sold to them, and hell was let loose in the yards. Every
night there were stabbings and shootings; it was said that the packers
had blank permits, which enabled them to ship dead bodies from the city
without troubling the authorities. They lodged men and women on the
same floor; and with the night there began a saturnalia of
debauchery—scenes such as never before had been witnessed in America.
And as the women were the dregs from the brothels of Chicago, and the
men were for the most part ignorant country Negroes, the nameless
diseases of vice were soon rife; and this where food was being handled
which was sent out to every corner of the civilized world.

The “Union Stockyards” were never a pleasant place; but now they were
not only a collection of slaughterhouses, but also the camping place of
an army of fifteen or twenty thousand human beasts. All day long the
blazing midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations:
upon tens of thousands of cattle crowded into pens whose wooden floors
stank and steamed contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn
railroad tracks, and huge blocks of dingy meat factories, whose
labyrinthine passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate them;
and there were not merely rivers of hot blood, and car-loads of moist
flesh, and rendering vats and soap caldrons, glue factories and
fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell—there were also
tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy laundry of the
workers hung out to dry, and dining rooms littered with food and black
with flies, and toilet rooms that were open sewers.

And then at night, when this throng poured out into the streets to
play—fighting, gambling, drinking and carousing, cursing and screaming,
laughing and singing, playing banjoes and dancing! They were worked in
the yards all the seven days of the week, and they had their prize
fights and crap games on Sunday nights as well; but then around the
corner one might see a bonfire blazing, and an old, gray-headed
Negress, lean and witchlike, her hair flying wild and her eyes blazing,
yelling and chanting of the fires of perdition and the blood of the
“Lamb,” while men and women lay down upon the ground and moaned and
screamed in convulsions of terror and remorse.

Such were the stockyards during the strike; while the unions watched in
sullen despair, and the country clamored like a greedy child for its
food, and the packers went grimly on their way. Each day they added new
workers, and could be more stern with the old ones—could put them on
piecework, and dismiss them if they did not keep up the pace. Jurgis
was now one of their agents in this process; and he could feel the
change day by day, like the slow starting up of a huge machine. He had
gotten used to being a master of men; and because of the stifling heat
and the stench, and the fact that he was a “scab” and knew it and
despised himself. He was drinking, and developing a villainous temper,
and he stormed and cursed and raged at his men, and drove them until
they were ready to drop with exhaustion.

Then one day late in August, a superintendent ran into the place and
shouted to Jurgis and his gang to drop their work and come. They
followed him outside, to where, in the midst of a dense throng, they
saw several two-horse trucks waiting, and three patrol-wagon loads of
police. Jurgis and his men sprang upon one of the trucks, and the
driver yelled to the crowd, and they went thundering away at a gallop.
Some steers had just escaped from the yards, and the strikers had got
hold of them, and there would be the chance of a scrap!

They went out at the Ashland Avenue gate, and over in the direction of
the “dump.” There was a yell as soon as they were sighted, men and
women rushing out of houses and saloons as they galloped by. There were
eight or ten policemen on the truck, however, and there was no
disturbance until they came to a place where the street was blocked
with a dense throng. Those on the flying truck yelled a warning and the
crowd scattered pell-mell, disclosing one of the steers lying in its
blood. There were a good many cattle butchers about just then, with
nothing much to do, and hungry children at home; and so some one had
knocked out the steer—and as a first-class man can kill and dress one
in a couple of minutes, there were a good many steaks and roasts
already missing. This called for punishment, of course; and the police
proceeded to administer it by leaping from the truck and cracking at
every head they saw. There were yells of rage and pain, and the
terrified people fled into houses and stores, or scattered
helter-skelter down the street. Jurgis and his gang joined in the
sport, every man singling out his victim, and striving to bring him to
bay and punch him. If he fled into a house his pursuer would smash in
the flimsy door and follow him up the stairs, hitting every one who
came within reach, and finally dragging his squealing quarry from under
a bed or a pile of old clothes in a closet.

Jurgis and two policemen chased some men into a bar-room. One of them
took shelter behind the bar, where a policeman cornered him and
proceeded to whack him over the back and shoulders, until he lay down
and gave a chance at his head. The others leaped a fence in the rear,
balking the second policeman, who was fat; and as he came back, furious
and cursing, a big Polish woman, the owner of the saloon, rushed in
screaming, and received a poke in the stomach that doubled her up on
the floor. Meantime Jurgis, who was of a practical temper, was helping
himself at the bar; and the first policeman, who had laid out his man,
joined him, handing out several more bottles, and filling his pockets
besides, and then, as he started to leave, cleaning off all the balance
with a sweep of his club. The din of the glass crashing to the floor
brought the fat Polish woman to her feet again, but another policeman
came up behind her and put his knee into her back and his hands over
her eyes—and then called to his companion, who went back and broke open
the cash drawer and filled his pockets with the contents. Then the
three went outside, and the man who was holding the woman gave her a
shove and dashed out himself. The gang having already got the carcass
on to the truck, the party set out at a trot, followed by screams and
curses, and a shower of bricks and stones from unseen enemies. These
bricks and stones would figure in the accounts of the “riot” which
would be sent out to a few thousand newspapers within an hour or two;
but the episode of the cash drawer would never be mentioned again, save
only in the heartbreaking legends of Packingtown.

It was late in the afternoon when they got back, and they dressed out
the remainder of the steer, and a couple of others that had been
killed, and then knocked off for the day. Jurgis went downtown to
supper, with three friends who had been on the other trucks, and they
exchanged reminiscences on the way. Afterward they drifted into a
roulette parlor, and Jurgis, who was never lucky at gambling, dropped
about fifteen dollars. To console himself he had to drink a good deal,
and he went back to Packingtown about two o’clock in the morning, very
much the worse for his excursion, and, it must be confessed, entirely
deserving the calamity that was in store for him.

As he was going to the place where he slept, he met a painted-cheeked
woman in a greasy “kimono,” and she put her arm about his waist to
steady him; they turned into a dark room they were passing—but scarcely
had they taken two steps before suddenly a door swung open, and a man
entered, carrying a lantern. “Who’s there?” he called sharply. And
Jurgis started to mutter some reply; but at the same instant the man
raised his light, which flashed in his face, so that it was possible to
recognize him. Jurgis stood stricken dumb, and his heart gave a leap
like a mad thing. The man was Connor!

Connor, the boss of the loading gang! The man who had seduced his
wife—who had sent him to prison, and wrecked his home, ruined his life!
He stood there, staring, with the light shining full upon him.

Jurgis had often thought of Connor since coming back to Packingtown,
but it had been as of something far off, that no longer concerned him.
Now, however, when he saw him, alive and in the flesh, the same thing
happened to him that had happened before—a flood of rage boiled up in
him, a blind frenzy seized him. And he flung himself at the man, and
smote him between the eyes—and then, as he fell, seized him by the
throat and began to pound his head upon the stones.

The woman began screaming, and people came rushing in. The lantern had
been upset and extinguished, and it was so dark they could not see a
thing; but they could hear Jurgis panting, and hear the thumping of his
victim’s skull, and they rushed there and tried to pull him off.
Precisely as before, Jurgis came away with a piece of his enemy’s flesh
between his teeth; and, as before, he went on fighting with those who
had interfered with him, until a policeman had come and beaten him into
insensibility.

And so Jurgis spent the balance of the night in the stockyards station
house. This time, however, he had money in his pocket, and when he came
to his senses he could get something to drink, and also a messenger to
take word of his plight to “Bush” Harper. Harper did not appear,
however, until after the prisoner, feeling very weak and ill, had been
hailed into court and remanded at five hundred dollars’ bail to await
the result of his victim’s injuries. Jurgis was wild about this,
because a different magistrate had chanced to be on the bench, and he
had stated that he had never been arrested before, and also that he had
been attacked first—and if only someone had been there to speak a good
word for him, he could have been let off at once.

But Harper explained that he had been downtown, and had not got the
message. “What’s happened to you?” he asked.

“I’ve been doing a fellow up,” said Jurgis, “and I’ve got to get five
hundred dollars’ bail.”

“I can arrange that all right,” said the other—“though it may cost you
a few dollars, of course. But what was the trouble?”

“It was a man that did me a mean trick once,” answered Jurgis.

“Who is he?”

“He’s a foreman in Brown’s or used to be. His name’s Connor.”

And the other gave a start. “Connor!” he cried. “Not Phil Connor!”

“Yes,” said Jurgis, “that’s the fellow. Why?”

“Good God!” exclaimed the other, “then you’re in for it, old man! I
can’t help you!”

“Not help me! Why not?”

“Why, he’s one of Scully’s biggest men—he’s a member of the War-Whoop
League, and they talked of sending him to the legislature! Phil Connor!
Great heavens!”

Jurgis sat dumb with dismay.

“Why, he can send you to Joliet, if he wants to!” declared the other.

“Can’t I have Scully get me off before he finds out about it?” asked
Jurgis, at length.

“But Scully’s out of town,” the other answered. “I don’t even know
where he is—he’s run away to dodge the strike.”

That was a pretty mess, indeed. Poor Jurgis sat half-dazed. His pull
had run up against a bigger pull, and he was down and out! “But what am
I going to do?” he asked, weakly.

“How should I know?” said the other. “I shouldn’t even dare to get bail
for you—why, I might ruin myself for life!”

Again there was silence. “Can’t you do it for me,” Jurgis asked, “and
pretend that you didn’t know who I’d hit?”

“But what good would that do you when you came to stand trial?” asked
Harper. Then he sat buried in thought for a minute or two. “There’s
nothing—unless it’s this,” he said. “I could have your bail reduced;
and then if you had the money you could pay it and skip.”

“How much will it be?” Jurgis asked, after he had had this explained
more in detail.

“I don’t know,” said the other. “How much do you own?”

“I’ve got about three hundred dollars,” was the answer.

“Well,” was Harper’s reply, “I’m not sure, but I’ll try and get you off
for that. I’ll take the risk for friendship’s sake—for I’d hate to see
you sent to state’s prison for a year or two.”

And so finally Jurgis ripped out his bankbook—which was sewed up in his
trousers—and signed an order, which “Bush” Harper wrote, for all the
money to be paid out. Then the latter went and got it, and hurried to
the court, and explained to the magistrate that Jurgis was a decent
fellow and a friend of Scully’s, who had been attacked by a
strike-breaker. So the bail was reduced to three hundred dollars, and
Harper went on it himself; he did not tell this to Jurgis, however—nor
did he tell him that when the time for trial came it would be an easy
matter for him to avoid the forfeiting of the bail, and pocket the
three hundred dollars as his reward for the risk of offending Mike
Scully! All that he told Jurgis was that he was now free, and that the
best thing he could do was to clear out as quickly as possible; and so
Jurgis overwhelmed with gratitude and relief, took the dollar and
fourteen cents that was left him out of all his bank account, and put
it with the two dollars and quarter that was left from his last night’s
celebration, and boarded a streetcar and got off at the other end of
Chicago.