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CHAPTER 12
For three weeks after his injury Jurgis never got up from bed.
It was a very obstinate sprain; the swelling would not go down, and the pain
still continued.
At the end of that time, however, he could contain himself no longer, and began trying
to walk a little every day, laboring to persuade himself that he was better.
No arguments could stop him, and three or four days later he declared that he was
going back to work.
He limped to the cars and got to Brown's, where he found that the boss had kept his
place--that is, was willing to turn out into the snow the poor devil he had hired
in the meantime.
Every now and then the pain would force Jurgis to stop work, but he stuck it out
till nearly an hour before closing.
Then he was forced to acknowledge that he could not go on without fainting; it almost
broke his heart to do it, and he stood leaning against a pillar and weeping like a
child.
Two of the men had to help him to the car, and when he got out he had to sit down and
wait in the snow till some one came along.
So they put him to bed again, and sent for the doctor, as they ought to have done in
the beginning.
It transpired that he had twisted a tendon out of place, and could never have gotten
well without attention.
Then he gripped the sides of the bed, and shut his teeth together, and turned white
with agony, while the doctor pulled and wrenched away at his swollen ankle.
When finally the doctor left, he told him that he would have to lie quiet for two
months, and that if he went to work before that time he might lame himself for life.
Three days later there came another heavy snowstorm, and Jonas and Marija and Ona and
little Stanislovas all set out together, an hour before daybreak, to try to get to the
yards.
About noon the last two came back, the boy screaming with pain.
His fingers were all frosted, it seemed.
They had had to give up trying to get to the yards, and had nearly perished in a
drift.
All that they knew how to do was to hold the frozen fingers near the fire, and so
little Stanislovas spent most of the day dancing about in horrible agony, till
Jurgis flew into a passion of nervous rage
and swore like a madman, declaring that he would kill him if he did not stop.
All that day and night the family was half- crazed with fear that Ona and the boy had
lost their places; and in the morning they set out earlier than ever, after the little
fellow had been beaten with a stick by Jurgis.
There could be no trifling in a case like this, it was a matter of life and death;
little Stanislovas could not be expected to realize that he might a great deal better
freeze in the snowdrift than lose his job at the lard machine.
Ona was quite certain that she would find her place gone, and was all unnerved when
she finally got to Brown's, and found that the forelady herself had failed to come,
and was therefore compelled to be lenient.
One of the consequences of this episode was that the first joints of three of the
little boy's fingers were permanently disabled, and another that thereafter he
always had to be beaten before he set out
to work, whenever there was fresh snow on the ground.
Jurgis was called upon to do the beating, and as it hurt his foot he did it with a
vengeance; but it did not tend to add to the sweetness of his temper.
They say that the best dog will turn cross if he be kept chained all the time, and it
was the same with the man; he had not a thing to do all day but lie and curse his
fate, and the time came when he wanted to curse everything.
This was never for very long, however, for when Ona began to cry, Jurgis could not
stay angry.
The poor fellow looked like a homeless ghost, with his cheeks sunken in and his
long black hair straggling into his eyes; he was too discouraged to cut it, or to
think about his appearance.
His muscles were wasting away, and what were left were soft and flabby.
He had no appetite, and they could not afford to tempt him with delicacies.
It was better, he said, that he should not eat, it was a saving.
About the end of March he had got hold of Ona's bankbook, and learned that there was
only three dollars left to them in the world.
But perhaps the worst of the consequences of this long siege was that they lost
another member of their family; Brother Jonas disappeared.
One Saturday night he did not come home, and thereafter all their efforts to get
trace of him were futile. It was said by the boss at Durham's that he
had gotten his week's money and left there.
That might not be true, of course, for sometimes they would say that when a man
had been killed; it was the easiest way out of it for all concerned.
When, for instance, a man had fallen into one of the rendering tanks and had been
made into pure leaf lard and peerless fertilizer, there was no use letting the
fact out and making his family unhappy.
More probable, however, was the theory that Jonas had deserted them, and gone on the
road, seeking happiness. He had been discontented for a long time,
and not without some cause.
He paid good board, and was yet obliged to live in a family where nobody had enough to
eat.
And Marija would keep giving them all her money, and of course he could not but feel
that he was called upon to do the same.
Then there were crying brats, and all sorts of misery; a man would have had to be a
good deal of a hero to stand it all without grumbling, and Jonas was not in the least a
hero--he was simply a weatherbeaten old
fellow who liked to have a good supper and sit in the corner by the fire and smoke his
pipe in peace before he went to bed.
Here there was not room by the fire, and through the winter the kitchen had seldom
been warm enough for comfort.
So, with the springtime, what was more likely than that the wild idea of escaping
had come to him?
Two years he had been yoked like a horse to a half-ton truck in Durham's dark cellars,
with never a rest, save on Sundays and four holidays in the year, and with never a word
of thanks--only kicks and blows and curses, such as no decent dog would have stood.
And now the winter was over, and the spring winds were blowing--and with a day's walk a
man might put the smoke of Packingtown behind him forever, and be where the grass
was green and the flowers all the colors of the rainbow!
But now the income of the family was cut down more than one-third, and the food
demand was cut only one-eleventh, so that they were worse off than ever.
Also they were borrowing money from Marija, and eating up her bank account, and
spoiling once again her hopes of marriage and happiness.
And they were even going into debt to Tamoszius Kuszleika and letting him
impoverish himself.
Poor Tamoszius was a man without any relatives, and with a wonderful talent
besides, and he ought to have made money and prospered; but he had fallen in love,
and so given hostages to fortune, and was doomed to be dragged down too.
So it was finally decided that two more of the children would have to leave school.
Next to Stanislovas, who was now fifteen, there was a girl, little Kotrina, who was
two years younger, and then two boys, Vilimas, who was eleven, and Nikalojus, who
was ten.
Both of these last were bright boys, and there was no reason why their family should
starve when tens of thousands of children no older were earning their own livings.
So one morning they were given a quarter apiece and a roll with a sausage in it,
and, with their minds top-heavy with good advice, were sent out to make their way to
the city and learn to sell newspapers.
They came back late at night in tears, having walked for the five or six miles to
report that a man had offered to take them to a place where they sold newspapers, and
had taken their money and gone into a store to get them, and nevermore been seen.
So they both received a whipping, and the next morning set out again.
This time they found the newspaper place, and procured their stock; and after
wandering about till nearly noontime, saying "Paper?" to every one they saw, they
had all their stock taken away and received
a thrashing besides from a big newsman upon whose territory they had trespassed.
Fortunately, however, they had already sold some papers, and came back with nearly as
much as they started with.
After a week of mishaps such as these, the two little fellows began to learn the ways
of the trade--the names of the different papers, and how many of each to get, and
what sort of people to offer them to, and where to go and where to stay away from.
After this, leaving home at four o'clock in the morning, and running about the streets,
first with morning papers and then with evening, they might come home late at night
with twenty or thirty cents apiece-- possibly as much as forty cents.
From this they had to deduct their carfare, since the distance was so great; but after
a while they made friends, and learned still more, and then they would save their
carfare.
They would get on a car when the conductor was not looking, and hide in the crowd; and
three times out of four he would not ask for their fares, either not seeing them, or
thinking they had already paid; or if he
did ask, they would hunt through their pockets, and then begin to cry, and either
have their fares paid by some kind old lady, or else try the trick again on a new
car.
All this was fair play, they felt. Whose fault was it that at the hours when
workingmen were going to their work and back, the cars were so crowded that the
conductors could not collect all the fares?
And besides, the companies were thieves, people said--had stolen all their
franchises with the help of scoundrelly politicians!
Now that the winter was by, and there was no more danger of snow, and no more coal to
buy, and another room warm enough to put the children into when they cried, and
enough money to get along from week to week
with, Jurgis was less terrible than he had been.
A man can get used to anything in the course of time, and Jurgis had gotten used
to lying about the house.
Ona saw this, and was very careful not to destroy his peace of mind, by letting him
know how very much pain she was suffering.
It was now the time of the spring rains, and Ona had often to ride to her work, in
spite of the expense; she was getting paler every day, and sometimes, in spite of her
good resolutions, it pained her that Jurgis did not notice it.
She wondered if he cared for her as much as ever, if all this misery was not wearing
out his love.
She had to be away from him all the time, and bear her own troubles while he was
bearing his; and then, when she came home, she was so worn out; and whenever they
talked they had only their worries to talk
of--truly it was hard, in such a life, to keep any sentiment alive.
The woe of this would flame up in Ona sometimes--at night she would suddenly
clasp her big husband in her arms and break into passionate weeping, demanding to know
if he really loved her.
Poor Jurgis, who had in truth grown more matter-of-fact, under the endless pressure
of penury, would not know what to make of these things, and could only try to
recollect when he had last been cross; and
so Ona would have to forgive him and sob herself to sleep.
The latter part of April Jurgis went to see the doctor, and was given a bandage to lace
about his ankle, and told that he might go back to work.
It needed more than the permission of the doctor, however, for when he showed up on
the killing floor of Brown's, he was told by the foreman that it had not been
possible to keep his job for him.
Jurgis knew that this meant simply that the foreman had found some one else to do the
work as well and did not want to bother to make a change.
He stood in the doorway, looking mournfully on, seeing his friends and companions at
work, and feeling like an outcast. Then he went out and took his place with
the mob of the unemployed.
This time, however, Jurgis did not have the same fine confidence, nor the same reason
for it.
He was no longer the finest-looking man in the throng, and the bosses no longer made
for him; he was thin and haggard, and his clothes were seedy, and he looked
miserable.
And there were hundreds who looked and felt just like him, and who had been wandering
about Packingtown for months begging for work.
This was a critical time in Jurgis' life, and if he had been a weaker man he would
have gone the way the rest did.
Those out-of-work wretches would stand about the packing houses every morning till
the police drove them away, and then they would scatter among the saloons.
Very few of them had the nerve to face the rebuffs that they would encounter by trying
to get into the buildings to interview the bosses; if they did not get a chance in the
morning, there would be nothing to do but
hang about the saloons the rest of the day and night.
Jurgis was saved from all this--partly, to be sure, because it was pleasant weather,
and there was no need to be indoors; but mainly because he carried with him always
the pitiful little face of his wife.
He must get work, he told himself, fighting the battle with despair every hour of the
day. He must get work!
He must have a place again and some money saved up, before the next winter came.
But there was no work for him.
He sought out all the members of his union- -Jurgis had stuck to the union through all
this--and begged them to speak a word for him.
He went to every one he knew, asking for a chance, there or anywhere.
He wandered all day through the buildings; and in a week or two, when he had been all
over the yards, and into every room to which he had access, and learned that there
was not a job anywhere, he persuaded
himself that there might have been a change in the places he had first visited, and
began the round all over; till finally the watchmen and the "spotters" of the
companies came to know him by sight and to order him out with threats.
Then there was nothing more for him to do but go with the crowd in the morning, and
keep in the front row and look eager, and when he failed, go back home, and play with
little Kotrina and the baby.
The peculiar bitterness of all this was that Jurgis saw so plainly the meaning of
it.
In the beginning he had been fresh and strong, and he had gotten a job the first
day; but now he was second-hand, a damaged article, so to speak, and they did not want
him.
They had got the best of him--they had worn him out, with their speeding-up and their
carelessness, and now they had thrown him away!
And Jurgis would make the acquaintance of others of these unemployed men and find
that they had all had the same experience.
There were some, of course, who had wandered in from other places, who had been
ground up in other mills; there were others who were out from their own fault--some,
for instance, who had not been able to stand the awful grind without drink.
The vast majority, however, were simply the worn-out parts of the great merciless
packing machine; they had toiled there, and kept up with the pace, some of them for ten
or twenty years, until finally the time had
come when they could not keep up with it any more.
Some had been frankly told that they were too old, that a sprier man was needed;
others had given occasion, by some act of carelessness or incompetence; with most,
however, the occasion had been the same as with Jurgis.
They had been overworked and underfed so long, and finally some disease had laid
them on their backs; or they had cut themselves, and had blood poisoning, or met
with some other accident.
When a man came back after that, he would get his place back only by the courtesy of
the boss.
To this there was no exception, save when the accident was one for which the firm was
liable; in that case they would send a slippery lawyer to see him, first to try to
get him to sign away his claims, but if he
was too smart for that, to promise him that he and his should always be provided with
work. This promise they would keep, strictly and
to the letter--for two years.
Two years was the "statute of limitations," and after that the victim could not sue.
What happened to a man after any of these things, all depended upon the
circumstances.
If he were of the highly skilled workers, he would probably have enough saved up to
tide him over.
The best paid men, the "splitters," made fifty cents an hour, which would be five or
six dollars a day in the rush seasons, and one or two in the dullest.
A man could live and save on that; but then there were only half a dozen splitters in
each place, and one of them that Jurgis knew had a family of twenty-two children,
all hoping to grow up to be splitters like their father.
For an unskilled man, who made ten dollars a week in the rush seasons and five in the
dull, it all depended upon his age and the number he had dependent upon him.
An unmarried man could save, if he did not drink, and if he was absolutely selfish--
that is, if he paid no heed to the demands of his old parents, or of his little
brothers and sisters, or of any other
relatives he might have, as well as of the members of his union, and his chums, and
the people who might be starving to death next door.