The Jungle
rooms. These people could not be shown to the visitor,—for the odor of
a fertilizer man would scare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards,
and as for the other men, who worked in tank rooms full of steam, and
in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor,
their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they
were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth
exhibiting,—sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but
the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard!
CHAPTER X
During the early part of the winter the family had had money enough to
live and a little over to pay their debts with; but when the earnings
of Jurgis fell from nine or ten dollars a week to five or six, there
was no longer anything to spare. The winter went, and the spring came,
and found them still living thus from hand to mouth, hanging on day by
day, with literally not a month’s wages between them and starvation.
Marija was in despair, for there was still no word about the reopening
of the canning factory, and her savings were almost entirely gone. She
had had to give up all idea of marrying then; the family could not get
along without her—though for that matter she was likely soon to become
a burden even upon them, for when her money was all gone, they would
have to pay back what they owed her in board. So Jurgis and Ona and
Teta Elzbieta would hold anxious conferences until late at night,
trying to figure how they could manage this too without starving.
Such were the cruel terms upon which their life was possible, that they
might never have nor expect a single instant’s respite from worry, a
single instant in which they were not haunted by the thought of money.
They would no sooner escape, as by a miracle, from one difficulty, than
a new one would come into view. In addition to all their physical
hardships, there was thus a constant strain upon their minds; they were
harried all day and nearly all night by worry and fear. This was in
truth not living; it was scarcely even existing, and they felt that it
was too little for the price they paid. They were willing to work all
the time; and when people did their best, ought they not to be able to
keep alive?
There seemed never to be an end to the things they had to buy and to
the unforeseen contingencies. Once their water pipes froze and burst;
and when, in their ignorance, they thawed them out, they had a
terrifying flood in their house. It happened while the men were away,
and poor Elzbieta rushed out into the street screaming for help, for
she did not even know whether the flood could be stopped, or whether
they were ruined for life. It was nearly as bad as the latter, they
found in the end, for the plumber charged them seventy-five cents an
hour, and seventy-five cents for another man who had stood and watched
him, and included all the time the two had been going and coming, and
also a charge for all sorts of material and extras. And then again,
when they went to pay their January’s installment on the house, the
agent terrified them by asking them if they had had the insurance
attended to yet. In answer to their inquiry he showed them a clause in
the deed which provided that they were to keep the house insured for
one thousand dollars, as soon as the present policy ran out, which
would happen in a few days. Poor Elzbieta, upon whom again fell the
blow, demanded how much it would cost them. Seven dollars, the man
said; and that night came Jurgis, grim and determined, requesting that
the agent would be good enough to inform him, once for all, as to all
the expenses they were liable for. The deed was signed now, he said,
with sarcasm proper to the new way of life he had learned—the deed was
signed, and so the agent had no longer anything to gain by keeping
quiet. And Jurgis looked the fellow squarely in the eye, and so the
fellow wasted no time in conventional protests, but read him the deed.
They would have to renew the insurance every year; they would have to
pay the taxes, about ten dollars a year; they would have to pay the
water tax, about six dollars a year—(Jurgis silently resolved to shut
off the hydrant). This, besides the interest and the monthly
installments, would be all—unless by chance the city should happen to
decide to put in a sewer or to lay a sidewalk. Yes, said the agent,
they would have to have these, whether they wanted them or not, if the
city said so. The sewer would cost them about twenty-two dollars, and
the sidewalk fifteen if it were wood, twenty-five if it were cement.
So Jurgis went home again; it was a relief to know the worst, at any
rate, so that he could no more be surprised by fresh demands. He saw
now how they had been plundered; but they were in for it, there was no
turning back. They could only go on and make the fight and win—for
defeat was a thing that could not even be thought of.
When the springtime came, they were delivered from the dreadful cold,
and that was a great deal; but in addition they had counted on the
money they would not have to pay for coal—and it was just at this time
that Marija’s board began to fail. Then, too, the warm weather brought
trials of its own; each season had its trials, as they found. In the
spring there were cold rains, that turned the streets into canals and
bogs; the mud would be so deep that wagons would sink up to the hubs,
so that half a dozen horses could not move them. Then, of course, it
was impossible for any one to get to work with dry feet; and this was
bad for men that were poorly clad and shod, and still worse for women
and children. Later came midsummer, with the stifling heat, when the
dingy killing beds of Durham’s became a very purgatory; one time, in a
single day, three men fell dead from sunstroke. All day long the rivers
of hot blood poured forth, until, with the sun beating down, and the
air motionless, the stench was enough to knock a man over; all the old
smells of a generation would be drawn out by this heat—for there was
never any washing of the walls and rafters and pillars, and they were
caked with the filth of a lifetime. The men who worked on the killing
beds would come to reek with foulness, so that you could smell one of
them fifty feet away; there was simply no such thing as keeping decent,
the most careful man gave it up in the end, and wallowed in
uncleanness. There was not even a place where a man could wash his
hands, and the men ate as much raw blood as food at dinnertime. When
they were at work they could not even wipe off their faces—they were as
helpless as newly born babes in that respect; and it may seem like a
small matter, but when the sweat began to run down their necks and
tickle them, or a fly to bother them, it was a torture like being
burned alive. Whether it was the slaughterhouses or the dumps that were
responsible, one could not say, but with the hot weather there
descended upon Packingtown a veritable Egyptian plague of flies; there
could be no describing this—the houses would be black with them. There
was no escaping; you might provide all your doors and windows with
screens, but their buzzing outside would be like the swarming of bees,
and whenever you opened the door they would rush in as if a storm of
wind were driving them.
Perhaps the summertime suggests to you thoughts of the country, visions
of green fields and mountains and sparkling lakes. It had no such
suggestion for the people in the yards. The great packing machine
ground on remorselessly, without thinking of green fields; and the men
and women and children who were part of it never saw any green thing,
not even a flower. Four or five miles to the east of them lay the blue
waters of Lake Michigan; but for all the good it did them it might have
been as far away as the Pacific Ocean. They had only Sundays, and then
they were too tired to walk. They were tied to the great packing
machine, and tied to it for life. The managers and superintendents and
clerks of Packingtown were all recruited from another class, and never
from the workers; they scorned the workers, the very meanest of them. A
poor devil of a bookkeeper who had been working in Durham’s for twenty
years at a salary of six dollars a week, and might work there for
twenty more and do no better, would yet consider himself a gentleman,
as far removed as the poles from the most skilled worker on the killing
beds; he would dress differently, and live in another part of the town,
and come to work at a different hour of the day, and in every way make
sure that he never rubbed elbows with a laboring man. Perhaps this was
due to the repulsiveness of the work; at any rate, the people who
worked with their hands were a class apart, and were made to feel it.
In the late spring the canning factory started up again, and so once
more Marija was heard to sing, and the love-music of Tamoszius took on
a less melancholy tone. It was not for long, however; for a month or
two later a dreadful calamity fell upon Marija. Just one year and three
days after she had begun work as a can-painter, she lost her job.
It was a long story. Marija insisted that it was because of her
activity in the union. The packers, of course, had spies in all the
unions, and in addition they made a practice of buying up a certain
number of the union officials, as many as they thought they needed. So
every week they received reports as to what was going on, and often
they knew things before the members of the union knew them. Any one who
was considered to be dangerous by them would find that he was not a
favorite with his boss; and Marija had been a great hand for going
after the foreign people and preaching to them. However that might be,
the known facts were that a few weeks before the factory closed, Marija
had been cheated out of her pay for three hundred cans. The girls
worked at a long table, and behind them walked a woman with pencil and
notebook, keeping count of the number they finished. This woman was, of
course, only human, and sometimes made mistakes; when this happened,
there was no redress—if on Saturday you got less money than you had
earned, you had to make the best of it. But Marija did not understand
this, and made a disturbance. Marija’s disturbances did not mean
anything, and while she had known only Lithuanian and Polish, they had
done no harm, for people only laughed at her and made her cry. But now
Marija was able to call names in English, and so she got the woman who
made the mistake to disliking her. Probably, as Marija claimed, she
made mistakes on purpose after that; at any rate, she made them, and
the third time it happened Marija went on the warpath and took the
matter first to the forelady, and when she got no satisfaction there,
to the superintendent. This was unheard-of presumption, but the
superintendent said he would see about it, which Marija took to mean
that she was going to get her money; after waiting three days, she went
to see the superintendent again. This time the man frowned, and said
that he had not had time to attend to it; and when Marija, against the
advice and warning of every one, tried it once more, he ordered her
back to her work in a passion. Just how things happened after that
Marija was not sure, but that afternoon the forelady told her that her
services would not be any longer required. Poor Marija could not have
been more dumfounded had the woman knocked her over the head; at first
she could not believe what she heard, and then she grew furious and
swore that she would come anyway, that her place belonged to her. In
the end she sat down in the middle of the floor and wept and wailed.
It was a cruel lesson; but then Marija was headstrong—she should have