The Jungle
and closer—which was trying, because his teeth were so bad. Jurgis did
not mind that, only he was frightened. The method of operation of the
higher intelligences was Tom Finnegan’s theme, and he desired to find
out if Jurgis had ever considered that the representation of things in
their present similarity might be altogether unintelligible upon a more
elevated plane. There were assuredly wonderful mysteries about the
developing of these things; and then, becoming confidential, Mr.
Finnegan proceeded to tell of some discoveries of his own. “If ye have
iver had onything to do wid shperrits,” said he, and looked inquiringly
at Jurgis, who kept shaking his head. “Niver mind, niver mind,”
continued the other, “but their influences may be operatin’ upon ye;
it’s shure as I’m tellin’ ye, it’s them that has the reference to the
immejit surroundin’s that has the most of power. It was vouchsafed to
me in me youthful days to be acquainted with shperrits” and so Tommy
Finnegan went on, expounding a system of philosophy, while the
perspiration came out on Jurgis’ forehead, so great was his agitation
and embarrassment. In the end one of the men, seeing his plight, came
over and rescued him; but it was some time before he was able to find
any one to explain things to him, and meanwhile his fear lest the
strange little Irishman should get him cornered again was enough to
keep him dodging about the room the whole evening.
He never missed a meeting, however. He had picked up a few words of
English by this time, and friends would help him to understand. They
were often very turbulent meetings, with half a dozen men declaiming at
once, in as many dialects of English; but the speakers were all
desperately in earnest, and Jurgis was in earnest too, for he
understood that a fight was on, and that it was his fight. Since the
time of his disillusionment, Jurgis had sworn to trust no man, except
in his own family; but here he discovered that he had brothers in
affliction, and allies. Their one chance for life was in union, and so
the struggle became a kind of crusade. Jurgis had always been a member
of the church, because it was the right thing to be, but the church had
never touched him, he left all that for the women. Here, however, was a
new religion—one that did touch him, that took hold of every fiber of
him; and with all the zeal and fury of a convert he went out as a
missionary. There were many nonunion men among the Lithuanians, and
with these he would labor and wrestle in prayer, trying to show them
the right. Sometimes they would be obstinate and refuse to see it, and
Jurgis, alas, was not always patient! He forgot how he himself had been
blind, a short time ago—after the fashion of all crusaders since the
original ones, who set out to spread the gospel of Brotherhood by force
of arms.
CHAPTER IX
One of the first consequences of the discovery of the union was that
Jurgis became desirous of learning English. He wanted to know what was
going on at the meetings, and to be able to take part in them, and so
he began to look about him, and to try to pick up words. The children,
who were at school, and learning fast, would teach him a few; and a
friend loaned him a little book that had some in it, and Ona would read
them to him. Then Jurgis became sorry that he could not read himself;
and later on in the winter, when some one told him that there was a
night school that was free, he went and enrolled. After that, every
evening that he got home from the yards in time, he would go to the
school; he would go even if he were in time for only half an hour. They
were teaching him both to read and to speak English—and they would have
taught him other things, if only he had had a little time.
Also the union made another great difference with him—it made him begin
to pay attention to the country. It was the beginning of democracy with
him. It was a little state, the union, a miniature republic; its
affairs were every man’s affairs, and every man had a real say about
them. In other words, in the union Jurgis learned to talk politics. In
the place where he had come from there had not been any politics—in
Russia one thought of the government as an affliction like the
lightning and the hail. “Duck, little brother, duck,” the wise old
peasants would whisper; “everything passes away.” And when Jurgis had
first come to America he had supposed that it was the same. He had
heard people say that it was a free country—but what did that mean? He
found that here, precisely as in Russia, there were rich men who owned
everything; and if one could not find any work, was not the hunger he
began to feel the same sort of hunger?
When Jurgis had been working about three weeks at Brown’s, there had
come to him one noontime a man who was employed as a night watchman,
and who asked him if he would not like to take out naturalization
papers and become a citizen. Jurgis did not know what that meant, but
the man explained the advantages. In the first place, it would not cost
him anything, and it would get him half a day off, with his pay just
the same; and then when election time came he would be able to vote—and
there was something in that. Jurgis was naturally glad to accept, and
so the night watchman said a few words to the boss, and he was excused
for the rest of the day. When, later on, he wanted a holiday to get
married he could not get it; and as for a holiday with pay just the
same—what power had wrought that miracle heaven only knew! However, he
went with the man, who picked up several other newly landed immigrants,
Poles, Lithuanians, and Slovaks, and took them all outside, where stood
a great four-horse tallyho coach, with fifteen or twenty men already in
it. It was a fine chance to see the sights of the city, and the party
had a merry time, with plenty of beer handed up from inside. So they
drove downtown and stopped before an imposing granite building, in
which they interviewed an official, who had the papers all ready, with
only the names to be filled in. So each man in turn took an oath of
which he did not understand a word, and then was presented with a
handsome ornamented document with a big red seal and the shield of the
United States upon it, and was told that he had become a citizen of the
Republic and the equal of the President himself.
A month or two later Jurgis had another interview with this same man,
who told him where to go to “register.” And then finally, when election
day came, the packing houses posted a notice that men who desired to
vote might remain away until nine that morning, and the same night
watchman took Jurgis and the rest of his flock into the back room of a
saloon, and showed each of them where and how to mark a ballot, and
then gave each two dollars, and took them to the polling place, where
there was a policeman on duty especially to see that they got through
all right. Jurgis felt quite proud of this good luck till he got home
and met Jonas, who had taken the leader aside and whispered to him,
offering to vote three times for four dollars, which offer had been
accepted.
And now in the union Jurgis met men who explained all this mystery to
him; and he learned that America differed from Russia in that its
government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials who
ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there
were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the
one got the office which bought the most votes. Now and then, the
election was very close, and that was the time the poor man came in. In
the stockyards this was only in national and state elections, for in
local elections the Democratic Party always carried everything. The
ruler of the district was therefore the Democratic boss, a little
Irishman named Mike Scully. Scully held an important party office in
the state, and bossed even the mayor of the city, it was said; it was
his boast that he carried the stockyards in his pocket. He was an
enormously rich man—he had a hand in all the big graft in the
neighborhood. It was Scully, for instance, who owned that dump which
Jurgis and Ona had seen the first day of their arrival. Not only did he
own the dump, but he owned the brick factory as well, and first he took
out the clay and made it into bricks, and then he had the city bring
garbage to fill up the hole, so that he could build houses to sell to
the people. Then, too, he sold the bricks to the city, at his own
price, and the city came and got them in its own wagons. And also he
owned the other hole near by, where the stagnant water was; and it was
he who cut the ice and sold it; and what was more, if the men told
truth, he had not had to pay any taxes for the water, and he had built
the ice-house out of city lumber, and had not had to pay anything for
that. The newspapers had got hold of that story, and there had been a
scandal; but Scully had hired somebody to confess and take all the
blame, and then skip the country. It was said, too, that he had built
his brick-kiln in the same way, and that the workmen were on the city
payroll while they did it; however, one had to press closely to get
these things out of the men, for it was not their business, and Mike
Scully was a good man to stand in with. A note signed by him was equal
to a job any time at the packing houses; and also he employed a good
many men himself, and worked them only eight hours a day, and paid them
the highest wages. This gave him many friends—all of whom he had gotten
together into the “War Whoop League,” whose clubhouse you might see
just outside of the yards. It was the biggest clubhouse, and the
biggest club, in all Chicago; and they had prizefights every now and
then, and cockfights and even dogfights. The policemen in the district
all belonged to the league, and instead of suppressing the fights, they
sold tickets for them. The man that had taken Jurgis to be naturalized
was one of these “Indians,” as they were called; and on election day
there would be hundreds of them out, and all with big wads of money in
their pockets and free drinks at every saloon in the district. That was
another thing, the men said—all the saloon-keepers had to be “Indians,”
and to put up on demand, otherwise they could not do business on
Sundays, nor have any gambling at all. In the same way Scully had all
the jobs in the fire department at his disposal, and all the rest of
the city graft in the stockyards district; he was building a block of
flats somewhere up on Ashland Avenue, and the man who was overseeing it
for him was drawing pay as a city inspector of sewers. The city
inspector of water pipes had been dead and buried for over a year, but
somebody was still drawing his pay. The city inspector of sidewalks was
a barkeeper at the War Whoop Café—and maybe he could make it
uncomfortable for any tradesman who did not stand in with Scully!
Even the packers were in awe of him, so the men said. It gave them
pleasure to believe this, for Scully stood as the people’s man, and
boasted of it boldly when election day came. The packers had wanted a
bridge at Ashland Avenue, but they had not been able to get it till
they had seen Scully; and it was the same with “Bubbly Creek,” which
the city had threatened to make the packers cover over, till Scully had
come to their aid. “Bubbly Creek” is an arm of the Chicago River, and
forms the southern boundary of the yards: all the drainage of the
square mile of packing houses empties into it, so that it is really a
great open sewer a hundred or two feet wide. One long arm of it is
blind, and the filth stays there forever and a day. The grease and
chemicals that are poured into it undergo all sorts of strange
transformations, which are the cause of its name; it is constantly in