The Jungle

fter breakfast Jurgis was driven to the court, which was crowded with
the prisoners and those who had come out of curiosity or in the hope of
recognizing one of the men and getting a case for blackmail. The men
were called up first, and reprimanded in a bunch, and then dismissed;
but, Jurgis, to his terror, was called separately, as being a
suspicious-looking case. It was in this very same court that he had
been tried, that time when his sentence had been “suspended”; it was
the same judge, and the same clerk. The latter now stared at Jurgis, as
if he half thought that he knew him; but the judge had no
suspicions—just then his thoughts were upon a telephone message he was
expecting from a friend of the police captain of the district, telling
what disposition he should make of the case of “Polly” Simpson, as the
“madame” of the house was known. Meantime, he listened to the story of
how Jurgis had been looking for his sister, and advised him dryly to
keep his sister in a better place; then he let him go, and proceeded to
fine each of the girls five dollars, which fines were paid in a bunch
from a wad of bills which Madame Polly extracted from her stocking.

Jurgis waited outside and walked home with Marija. The police had left
the house, and already there were a few visitors; by evening the place
would be running again, exactly as if nothing had happened. Meantime,
Marija took Jurgis upstairs to her room, and they sat and talked. By
daylight, Jurgis was able to observe that the color on her cheeks was
not the old natural one of abounding health; her complexion was in
reality a parchment yellow, and there were black rings under her eyes.

“Have you been sick?” he asked.

“Sick?” she said. “Hell!” (Marija had learned to scatter her
conversation with as many oaths as a longshoreman or a mule driver.)
“How can I ever be anything but sick, at this life?”

She fell silent for a moment, staring ahead of her gloomily. “It’s
morphine,” she said, at last. “I seem to take more of it every day.”

“What’s that for?” he asked.

“It’s the way of it; I don’t know why. If it isn’t that, it’s drink. If
the girls didn’t booze they couldn’t stand it any time at all. And the
madame always gives them dope when they first come, and they learn to
like it; or else they take it for headaches and such things, and get
the habit that way. I’ve got it, I know; I’ve tried to quit, but I
never will while I’m here.”

“How long are you going to stay?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Always, I guess. What else could I do?”

“Don’t you save any money?”

“Save!” said Marija. “Good Lord, no! I get enough, I suppose, but it
all goes. I get a half share, two dollars and a half for each customer,
and sometimes I make twenty-five or thirty dollars a night, and you’d
think I ought to save something out of that! But then I am charged for
my room and my meals—and such prices as you never heard of; and then
for extras, and drinks—for everything I get, and some I don’t. My
laundry bill is nearly twenty dollars each week alone—think of that!
Yet what can I do? I either have to stand it or quit, and it would be
the same anywhere else. It’s all I can do to save the fifteen dollars I
give Elzbieta each week, so the children can go to school.”

Marija sat brooding in silence for a while; then, seeing that Jurgis
was interested, she went on: “That’s the way they keep the girls—they
let them run up debts, so they can’t get away. A young girl comes from
abroad, and she doesn’t know a word of English, and she gets into a
place like this, and when she wants to go the madame shows her that she
is a couple of hundred dollars in debt, and takes all her clothes away,
and threatens to have her arrested if she doesn’t stay and do as she’s
told. So she stays, and the longer she stays, the more in debt she
gets. Often, too, they are girls that didn’t know what they were coming
to, that had hired out for housework. Did you notice that little French
girl with the yellow hair, that stood next to me in the court?”

Jurgis answered in the affirmative.

“Well, she came to America about a year ago. She was a store clerk, and
she hired herself to a man to be sent here to work in a factory. There
were six of them, all together, and they were brought to a house just
down the street from here, and this girl was put into a room alone, and
they gave her some dope in her food, and when she came to she found
that she had been ruined. She cried, and screamed, and tore her hair,
but she had nothing but a wrapper, and couldn’t get away, and they kept
her half insensible with drugs all the time, until she gave up. She
never got outside of that place for ten months, and then they sent her
away, because she didn’t suit. I guess they’ll put her out of here,
too—she’s getting to have crazy fits, from drinking absinthe. Only one
of the girls that came out with her got away, and she jumped out of a
second-story window one night. There was a great fuss about that—maybe
you heard of it.”

“I did,” said Jurgis, “I heard of it afterward.” (It had happened in
the place where he and Duane had taken refuge from their “country
customer.” The girl had become insane, fortunately for the police.)

“There’s lots of money in it,” said Marija—“they get as much as forty
dollars a head for girls, and they bring them from all over. There are
seventeen in this place, and nine different countries among them. In
some places you might find even more. We have half a dozen French
girls—I suppose it’s because the madame speaks the language. French
girls are bad, too, the worst of all, except for the Japanese. There’s
a place next door that’s full of Japanese women, but I wouldn’t live in
the same house with one of them.”

Marija paused for a moment or two, and then she added: “Most of the
women here are pretty decent—you’d be surprised. I used to think they
did it because they liked to; but fancy a woman selling herself to
every kind of man that comes, old or young, black or white—and doing it
because she likes to!”

“Some of them say they do,” said Jurgis.

“I know,” said she; “they say anything. They’re in, and they know they
can’t get out. But they didn’t like it when they began—you’d find
out—it’s always misery! There’s a little Jewish girl here who used to
run errands for a milliner, and got sick and lost her place; and she
was four days on the streets without a mouthful of food, and then she
went to a place just around the corner and offered herself, and they
made her give up her clothes before they would give her a bite to eat!”

Marija sat for a minute or two, brooding somberly. “Tell me about
yourself, Jurgis,” she said, suddenly. “Where have you been?”

So he told her the long story of his adventures since his flight from
home; his life as a tramp, and his work in the freight tunnels, and the
accident; and then of Jack Duane, and of his political career in the
stockyards, and his downfall and subsequent failures. Marija listened
with sympathy; it was easy to believe the tale of his late starvation,
for his face showed it all. “You found me just in the nick of time,”
she said. “I’ll stand by you—I’ll help you till you can get some work.”

“I don’t like to let you—” he began.

“Why not? Because I’m here?”

“No, not that,” he said. “But I went off and left you—”

“Nonsense!” said Marija. “Don’t think about it. I don’t blame you.”

“You must be hungry,” she said, after a minute or two. “You stay here
to lunch—I’ll have something up in the room.”

She pressed a button, and a colored woman came to the door and took her
order. “It’s nice to have somebody to wait on you,” she observed, with
a laugh, as she lay back on the bed.

As the prison breakfast had not been liberal, Jurgis had a good
appetite, and they had a little feast together, talking meanwhile of
Elzbieta and the children and old times. Shortly before they were
through, there came another colored girl, with the message that the
“madame” wanted Marija—“Lithuanian Mary,” as they called her here.

“That means you have to go,” she said to Jurgis.

So he got up, and she gave him the new address of the family, a
tenement over in the Ghetto district. “You go there,” she said.
“They’ll be glad to see you.”

But Jurgis stood hesitating.

“I—I don’t like to,” he said. “Honest, Marija, why don’t you just give
me a little money and let me look for work first?”

“How do you need money?” was her reply. “All you want is something to
eat and a place to sleep, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said; “but then I don’t like to go there after I left
them—and while I have nothing to do, and while you—you—”

“Go on!” said Marija, giving him a push. “What are you talking?—I won’t
give you money,” she added, as she followed him to the door, “because
you’ll drink it up, and do yourself harm. Here’s a quarter for you now,
and go along, and they’ll be so glad to have you back, you won’t have
time to feel ashamed. Good-by!”

So Jurgis went out, and walked down the street to think it over. He
decided that he would first try to get work, and so he put in the rest
of the day wandering here and there among factories and warehouses
without success. Then, when it was nearly dark, he concluded to go
home, and set out; but he came to a restaurant, and went in and spent
his quarter for a meal; and when he came out he changed his mind—the
night was pleasant, and he would sleep somewhere outside, and put in
the morrow hunting, and so have one more chance of a job. So he started
away again, when suddenly he chanced to look about him, and found that
he was walking down the same street and past the same hall where he had
listened to the political speech the night before. There was no red
fire and no band now, but there was a sign out, announcing a meeting,
and a stream of people pouring in through the entrance. In a flash
Jurgis had decided that he would chance it once more, and sit down and
rest while making up his mind what to do. There was no one taking
tickets, so it must be a free show again.

He entered. There were no decorations in the hall this time; but there
was quite a crowd upon the platform, and almost every seat in the place
was filled. He took one of the last, far in the rear, and straightway
forgot all about his surroundings. Would Elzbieta think that he had
come to sponge off her, or would she understand that he meant to get to
work again and do his share? Would she be decent to him, or would she
scold him? If only he could get some sort of a job before he went—if
that last boss had only been willing to try him!

—Then suddenly Jurgis looked up. A tremendous roar had burst from the
throats of the crowd, which by this time had packed the hall to the
very doors. Men and women were standing up, waving handkerchiefs,
shouting, yelling. Evidently the speaker had arrived, thought Jurgis;
what fools they were making of themselves! What were they expecting to
get out of it anyhow—what had they to do with elections, with governing
the country? Jurgis had been behind the scenes in politics.

He went back to his thoughts, but with one further fact to reckon
with—that he was caught here. The hall was now filled to the doors; and
after the meeting it would be too late for him to go home, so he would
have to make the best of it outside. Perhaps it would be better to go
home in the morning, anyway, for the children would be at school, and
he and Elzbieta could have a quiet explanation. She always had been a
reasonable person; and he really did mean to do right. He would manage
to persuade her of it—and besides, Marija was willing, and Marija was
furnishing the money. If Elzbieta were ugly, he would tell her that in
so many words.

So Jurgis went on meditating; until finally, when he had been an hour
or two in the hall, there began to prepare itself a repetition of the
dismal catastrophe of the night before. Speaking had been going on all
the time, and the audience was clapping its hands and shouting,
thrilling with excitement; and little by little the sounds were
beginning to blur in Jurgis’s ears, and his thoughts were beginning to
run together, and his head to wobble and nod. He caught himself many
times, as usual, and made desperate resolutions; but the hall was hot
and close, and his long walk and his dinner were too much for him—in
the end his head sank forward and he went off again.

And then again someone nudged him, and he sat up with his old terrified
start! He had been snoring again, of course! And now what? He fixed his
eyes ahead of him, with painful intensity, staring at the platform as
if nothing else ever had interested him, or ever could interest him,
all his life. He imagined the angry exclamations, the hostile glances;
he imagined the policeman striding toward him—reaching for his neck. Or
was he to have one more chance? Were they going to let him alone this
time? He sat trembling; waiting—

And then suddenly came a voice in his ear, a woman’s voice, gentle and
sweet, “If you would try to listen, comrade, perhaps you would be
interested.”

Jurgis was more startled by that than he would have been by the touch
of a policeman. He still kept his eyes fixed ahead, and did not stir;
but his heart gave a great leap. Comrade! Who was it that called him
“comrade”?

He waited long, long; and at last, when he was sure that he was no
longer watched, he stole a glance out of the corner of his eyes at the
woman who sat beside him. She was young and beautiful; she wore fine
clothes, and was what is called a “lady.” And she called him “comrade”!

He turned a little, carefully, so that he could see her better; then he
began to watch her, fascinated. She had apparently forgotten all about
him, and was looking toward the platform. A man was speaking
there—Jurgis heard his voice vaguely; but all his thoughts were for
this woman’s face. A feeling of alarm stole over him as he stared at
her. It made his flesh creep. What was the matter with her, what could
be going on, to affect any one like that? She sat as one turned to
stone, her hands clenched tightly in her lap, so tightly that he could
see the cords standing out in her wrists. There was a look of
excitement upon her face, of tense effort, as of one struggling
mightily, or witnessing a struggle. There was a faint quivering of her
nostrils; and now and then she would moisten her lips with feverish
haste. Her bosom rose and fell as she breathed, and her excitement
seemed to mount higher and higher, and then to sink away again, like a
boat tossing upon ocean surges. What was it? What was the matter? It
must be something that the man was saying, up there on the platform.
What sort of a man was he? And what sort of thing was this, anyhow?—So
all at once it occurred to Jurgis to look at the speaker.

It was like coming suddenly upon some wild sight of nature—a mountain
forest lashed by a tempest, a ship tossed about upon a stormy sea.
Jurgis had an unpleasant sensation, a sense of confusion, of disorder,
of wild and meaningless uproar. The man was tall and gaunt, as haggard
as his auditor himself; a thin black beard covered half of his face,
and one could see only two black hollows where the eyes were. He was
speaking rapidly, in great excitement; he used many gestures—as he
spoke he moved here and there upon the stage, reaching with his long
arms as if to seize each person in his audience. His voice was deep,
like an organ; it was some time, however, before Jurgis thought of the
voice—he was too much occupied with his eyes to think of what the man
was saying. But suddenly it seemed as if the speaker had begun pointing
straight at him, as if he had singled him out particularly for his
remarks; and so Jurgis became suddenly aware of his voice, trembling,
vibrant with emotion, with pain and longing, with a burden of things
unutterable, not to be compassed by words. To hear it was to be
suddenly arrested, to be gripped, transfixed.

“You listen to these things,” the man was saying, “and you say, ‘Yes,
they are true, but they have been that way always.’ Or you say, ‘Maybe
it will come, but not in my time—it will not help me.’ And so you
return to your daily round of toil, you go back to be ground up for
profits in the world-wide mill of economic might! To toil long hours
for another’s advantage; to live in mean and squalid homes, to work in
dangerous and unhealthful places; to wrestle with the specters of
hunger and privation, to take your chances of accident, disease, and
death. And each day the struggle becomes fiercer, the pace more cruel;
each day you have to toil a little harder, and feel the iron hand of
circumstance close upon you a little tighter. Months pass, years
maybe—and then you come again; and again I am here to plead with you,
to know if want and misery have yet done their work with you, if
injustice and oppression have yet opened your eyes! I shall still be
waiting—there is nothing else that I can do. There is no wilderness
where I can hide from these things, there is no haven where I can
escape them; though I travel to the ends of the earth, I find the same
accursed system—I find that all the fair and noble impulses of
humanity, the dreams of poets and the agonies of martyrs, are shackled
and bound in the service of organized and predatory Greed! And
therefore I cannot rest, I cannot be silent; therefore I cast aside
comfort and happiness, health and good repute—and go out into the world
and cry out the pain of my spirit! Therefore I am not to be silenced by
poverty and sickness, not by hatred and obloquy, by threats and
ridicule—not by prison and persecution, if they should come—not by any
power that is upon the earth or above the earth, that was, or is, or
ever can be created. If I fail tonight, I can only try tomorrow;
knowing that the fault must be mine—that if once the vision of my soul
were spoken upon earth, if once the anguish of its defeat were uttered
in human speech, it would break the stoutest barriers of prejudice, it
would shake the most sluggish soul to action! It would abash the most
cynical, it would terrify the most selfish; and the voice of mockery
would be silenced, and fraud and falsehood would slink back into their
dens, and the truth would stand forth alone! For I speak with the voice
of the millions who are voiceless! Of them that are oppressed and have
no comforter! Of the disinherited of life, for whom there is no respite
and no deliverance, to whom the world is a prison, a dungeon of
torture, a tomb! With the voice of the little child who toils tonight
in a Southern cotton mill, staggering with exhaustion, numb with agony,
and knowing no hope but the grave! Of the mother who sews by
candlelight in her tenement garret, weary and weeping, smitten with the
mortal hunger of her babes! Of the man who lies upon a bed of rags,
wrestling in his last sickness and leaving his loved ones to perish! Of
the young girl who, somewhere at this moment, is walking the streets of
this horrible city, beaten and starving, and making her choice between
the brothel and the lake! With the voice of those, whoever and wherever
they may be, who are caught beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of
Greed! With the voice of humanity, calling for deliverance! Of the
everlasting soul of Man, arising from the dust; breaking its way out of
its prison—rending the bands of oppression and ignorance—groping its
way to the light!”

The speaker paused. There was an instant of silence, while men caught
their breaths, and then like a single sound there came a cry from a
thousand people. Through it all Jurgis sat still, motionless and rigid,
his eyes fixed upon the speaker; he was trembling, smitten with wonder.

Suddenly the man raised his hands, and silence fell, and he began
again.

“I plead with you,” he said, “whoever you may be, provided that you
care about the truth; but most of all I plead with working-man, with
those to whom the evils I portray are not mere matters of sentiment, to
be dallied and toyed with, and then perhaps put aside and forgotten—to
whom they are the grim and relentless realities of the daily grind, the
chains upon their limbs, the lash upon their backs, the iron in their
souls. To you, working-men! To you, the toilers, who have made this
land, and have no voice in its councils! To you, whose lot it is to sow
that others may reap, to labor and obey, and ask no more than the wages
of a beast of burden, the food and shelter to keep you alive from day
to day. It is to you that I come with my message of salvation, it is to
you that I appeal. I know how much it is to ask of you—I know, for I
have been in your place, I have lived your life, and there is no man
before me here tonight who knows it better. I have known what it is to
be a street-waif, a bootblack, living upon a crust of bread and
sleeping in cellar stairways and under empty wagons. I have known what
it is to dare and to aspire, to dream mighty dreams and to see them
perish—to see all the fair flowers of my spirit trampled into the mire
by the wild-beast powers of my life. I know what is the price that a
working-man pays for knowledge—I have paid for it with food and sleep,
with agony of body and mind, with health, almost with life itself; and
so, when I come to you with a story of hope and freedom, with the
vision of a new earth to be created, of a new labor to be dared, I am
not surprised that I find you sordid and material, sluggish and
incredulous. That I do not despair is because I know also the forces
that are driving behind you—because I know the raging lash of poverty,
the sting of contempt and mastership, ‘the insolence of office and the
spurns.’ Because I feel sure that in the crowd that has come to me
tonight, no matter how many may be dull and heedless, no matter how
many may have come out of idle curiosity, or in order to ridicule—there
will be some one man whom pain and suffering have made desperate, whom
some chance vision of wrong and horror has startled and shocked into
attention. And to him my words will come like a sudden flash of
lightning to one who travels in darkness—revealing the way before him,
the perils and the obstacles—solving all problems, making all
difficulties clear! The scales will fall from his eyes, the shackles
will be torn from his limbs—he will leap up with a cry of thankfulness,
he will stride forth a free man at last! A man delivered from his
self-created slavery! A man who will never more be trapped—whom no
blandishments will cajole, whom no threats will frighten; who from
tonight on will move forward, and not backward, who will study and
understand, who will gird on his sword and take his place in the army
of his comrades and brothers. Who will carry the good tidings to
others, as I have carried them to him—priceless gift of liberty and
light that is neither mine nor his, but is the heritage of the soul of
man! Working-men, working-men—comrades! open your eyes and look about
you! You have lived so long in the toil and heat that your senses are
dulled, your souls are numbed; but realize once in your lives this
world in which you dwell—tear off the rags of its customs and
conventions—behold it as it is, in all its hideous nakedness! Realize
it, realize it! Realize that out upon the plains of Manchuria tonight
two hostile armies are facing each other—that now, while we are seated
here, a million human beings may be hurled at each other’s throats,
striving with the fury of maniacs to tear each other to pieces! And
this in the twentieth century, nineteen hundred years since the Prince
of Peace was born on earth! Nineteen hundred years that his words have
been preached as divine, and here two armies of men are rending and
tearing each other like the wild beasts of the forest! Philosophers
have reasoned, prophets have denounced, poets have wept and pleaded—and
still this hideous Monster roams at large! We have schools and
colleges, newspapers and books; we have searched the heavens and the
earth, we have weighed and probed and reasoned—and all to equip men to
destroy each other! We call it War, and pass it by—but do not put me
off with platitudes and conventions—come with me, come with me—realize
it! See the bodies of men pierced by bullets, blown into pieces by
bursting shells! Hear the crunching of the bayonet, plunged into human
flesh; hear the groans and shrieks of agony, see the faces of men
crazed by pain, turned into fiends by fury and hate! Put your hand upon
that piece of flesh—it is hot and quivering—just now it was a part of a
man! This blood is still steaming—it was driven by a human heart!
Almighty God! and this goes on—it is systematic, organized,
premeditated! And we know it, and read of it, and take it for granted;
our papers tell of it, and the presses are not stopped—our churches
know of it, and do not close their doors—the people behold it, and do
not rise up in horror and revolution!

“Or perhaps Manchuria is too far away for you—come home with me then,
come here to Chicago. Here in this city to-night ten thousand women are
shut up in foul pens, and driven by hunger to sell their bodies to
live. And we know it, we make it a jest! And these women are made in
the image of your mothers, they may be your sisters, your daughters;
the child whom you left at home tonight, whose laughing eyes will greet
you in the morning—that fate may be waiting for her! To-night in
Chicago there are ten thousand men, homeless and wretched, willing to
work and begging for a chance, yet starving, and fronting in terror the
awful winter cold! Tonight in Chicago there are a hundred thousand
children wearing out their strength and blasting their lives in the
effort to earn their bread! There are a hundred thousand mothers who
are living in misery and squalor, struggling to earn enough to feed
their little ones! There are a hundred thousand old people, cast off
and helpless, waiting for death to take them from their torments! There
are a million people, men and women and children, who share the curse
of the wage-slave; who toil every hour they can stand and see, for just
enough to keep them alive; who are condemned till the end of their days
to monotony and weariness, to hunger and misery, to heat and cold, to
dirt and disease, to ignorance and drunkenness and vice! And then turn
over the page with me, and gaze upon the other side of the picture.
There are a thousand—ten thousand, maybe—who are the masters of these
slaves, who own their toil. They do nothing to earn what they receive,
they do not even have to ask for it—it comes to them of itself, their
only care is to dispose of it. They live in palaces, they riot in
luxury and extravagance—such as no words can describe, as makes the
imagination reel and stagger, makes the soul grow sick and faint. They
spend hundreds of dollars for a pair of shoes, a handkerchief, a
garter; they spend millions for horses and automobiles and yachts, for
palaces and banquets, for little shiny stones with which to deck their
bodies. Their life is a contest among themselves for supremacy in
ostentation and recklessness, in the destroying of useful and necessary
things, in the wasting of the labor and the lives of their fellow
creatures, the toil and anguish of the nations, the sweat and tears and
blood of the human race! It is all theirs—it comes to them; just as all
the springs pour into streamlets, and the streamlets into rivers, and
the rivers into the oceans—so, automatically and inevitably, all the
wealth of society comes to them. The farmer tills the soil, the miner
digs in the earth, the weaver tends the loom, the mason carves the
stone; the clever man invents, the shrewd man directs, the wise man
studies, the inspired man sings—and all the result, the products of the
labor of brain and muscle, are gathered into one stupendous stream and
poured into their laps! The whole of society is in their grip, the
whole labor of the world lies at their mercy—and like fierce wolves
they rend and destroy, like ravening vultures they devour and tear! The
whole power of mankind belongs to them, forever and beyond recall—do
what it can, strive as it will, humanity lives for them and dies for
them! They own not merely the labor of society, they have bought the
governments; and everywhere they use their raped and stolen power to
intrench themselves in their privileges, to dig wider and deeper the
channels through which the river of profits flows to them!—And you,
workingmen, workingmen! You have been brought up to it, you plod on
like beasts of burden, thinking only of the day and its pain—yet is
there a man among you who can believe that such a system will continue
forever—is there a man here in this audience tonight so hardened and
debased that he dare rise up before me and say that he believes it can
continue forever; that the product of the labor of society, the means
of existence of the human race, will always belong to idlers and
parasites, to be spent for the gratification of vanity and lust—to be
spent for any purpose whatever, to be at the disposal of any individual
will whatever—that somehow, somewhere, the labor of humanity will not
belong to humanity, to be used for the purposes of humanity, to be
controlled by the will of humanity? And if this is ever to be, how is
it to be—what power is there that will bring it about? Will it be the
task of your masters, do you think—will they write the charter of your
liberties? Will they forge you the sword of your deliverance, will they
marshal you the army and lead it to the fray? Will their wealth be
spent for the purpose—will they build colleges and churches to teach
you, will they print papers to herald your progress, and organize
political parties to guide and carry on the struggle? Can you not see
that the task is your task—yours to dream, yours to resolve, yours to
execute? That if ever it is carried out, it will be in the face of
every obstacle that wealth and mastership can oppose—in the face of
ridicule and slander, of hatred and persecution, of the bludgeon and
the jail? That it will be by the power of your naked bosoms, opposed to
the rage of oppression! By the grim and bitter teaching of blind and
merciless affliction! By the painful gropings of the untutored mind, by
the feeble stammerings of the uncultured voice! By the sad and lonely
hunger of the spirit; by seeking and striving and yearning, by
heartache and despairing, by agony and sweat of blood! It will be by
money paid for with hunger, by knowledge stolen from sleep, by thoughts
communicated under the shadow of the gallows! It will be a movement
beginning in the far-off past, a thing obscure and unhonored, a thing
easy to ridicule, easy to despise; a thing unlovely, wearing the aspect
of vengeance and hate—but to you, the working-man, the wage-slave,
calling with a voice insistent, imperious—with a voice that you cannot
escape, wherever upon the earth you may be! With the voice of all your
wrongs, with the voice of all your desires; with the voice of your duty
and your hope—of everything in the world that is worth while to you!
The voice of the poor, demanding that poverty shall cease! The voice of
the oppressed, pronouncing the doom of oppression! The voice of power,
wrought out of suffering—of resolution, crushed out of weakness—of joy
and courage, born in the bottomless pit of anguish and despair! The
voice of Labor, despised and outraged; a mighty giant, lying
prostrate—mountainous, colossal, but blinded, bound, and ignorant of
his strength. And now a dream of resistance haunts him, hope battling
with fear; until suddenly he stirs, and a fetter snaps—and a thrill
shoots through him, to the farthest ends of his huge body, and in a
flash the dream becomes an act! He starts, he lifts himself; and the
bands are shattered, the burdens roll off him—he rises—towering,
gigantic; he springs to his feet, he shouts in his newborn exultation—”

And the speaker’s voice broke suddenly, with the stress of his
feelings; he stood with his arms stretched out above him, and the power
of his vision seemed to lift him from the floor. The audience came to
its feet with a yell; men waved their arms, laughing aloud in their
excitement. And Jurgis was with them, he was shouting to tear his
throat; shouting because he could not help it, because the stress of
his feeling was more than he could bear. It was not merely the man’s
words, the torrent of his eloquence. It was his presence, it was his
voice: a voice with strange intonations that rang through the chambers
of the soul like the clanging of a bell—that gripped the listener like
a mighty hand about his body, that shook him and startled him with
sudden fright, with a sense of things not of earth, of mysteries never
spoken before, of presences of awe and terror! There was an unfolding
of vistas before him, a breaking of the ground beneath him, an
upheaving, a stirring, a trembling; he felt himself suddenly a mere man
no longer—there were powers within him undreamed of, there were demon
forces contending, age-long wonders struggling to be born; and he sat
oppressed with pain and joy, while a tingling stole down into his
finger tips, and his breath came hard and fast. The sentences of this
man were to Jurgis like the crashing of thunder in his soul; a flood of
emotions surged up in him—all his old hopes and longings, his old
griefs and rages and despairs. All that he had ever felt in his whole
life seemed to come back to him at once, and with one new emotion,
hardly to be described. That he should have suffered such oppressions
and such horrors was bad enough; but that he should have been crushed
and beaten by them, that he should have submitted, and forgotten, and
lived in peace—ah, truly that was a thing not to be put into words, a
thing not to be borne by a human creature, a thing of terror and
madness! “What,” asks the prophet, “is the murder of them that kill the
body, to the murder of them that kill the soul?” And Jurgis was a man
whose soul had been murdered, who had ceased to hope and to
struggle—who had made terms with degradation and despair; and now,
suddenly, in one awful convulsion, the black and hideous fact was made
plain to him! There was a falling in of all the pillars of his soul,
the sky seemed to split above him—he stood there, with his clenched
hands upraised, his eyes bloodshot, and the veins standing out purple
in his face, roaring in the voice of a wild beast, frantic, incoherent,
maniacal. And when he could shout no more he still stood there,
gasping, and whispering hoarsely to himself: “By God! By God! By God!”