The Jungle
poor to continue.
CHAPTER XI
During the summer the packing houses were in full activity again, and
Jurgis made more money. He did not make so much, however, as he had the
previous summer, for the packers took on more hands. There were new men
every week, it seemed—it was a regular system; and this number they
would keep over to the next slack season, so that every one would have
less than ever. Sooner or later, by this plan, they would have all the
floating labor of Chicago trained to do their work. And how very
cunning a trick was that! The men were to teach new hands, who would
some day come and break their strike; and meantime they were kept so
poor that they could not prepare for the trial!
But let no one suppose that this superfluity of employees meant easier
work for any one! On the contrary, the speeding-up seemed to be growing
more savage all the time; they were continually inventing new devices
to crowd the work on—it was for all the world like the thumbscrew of
the mediæval torture chamber. They would get new pacemakers and pay
them more; they would drive the men on with new machinery—it was said
that in the hog-killing rooms the speed at which the hogs moved was
determined by clockwork, and that it was increased a little every day.
In piecework they would reduce the time, requiring the same work in a
shorter time, and paying the same wages; and then, after the workers
had accustomed themselves to this new speed, they would reduce the rate
of payment to correspond with the reduction in time! They had done this
so often in the canning establishments that the girls were fairly
desperate; their wages had gone down by a full third in the past two
years, and a storm of discontent was brewing that was likely to break
any day. Only a month after Marija had become a beef-trimmer the
canning factory that she had left posted a cut that would divide the
girls’ earnings almost squarely in half; and so great was the
indignation at this that they marched out without even a parley, and
organized in the street outside. One of the girls had read somewhere
that a red flag was the proper symbol for oppressed workers, and so
they mounted one, and paraded all about the yards, yelling with rage. A
new union was the result of this outburst, but the impromptu strike
went to pieces in three days, owing to the rush of new labor. At the
end of it the girl who had carried the red flag went downtown and got a
position in a great department store, at a salary of two dollars and a
half a week.
Jurgis and Ona heard these stories with dismay, for there was no
telling when their own time might come. Once or twice there had been
rumors that one of the big houses was going to cut its unskilled men to
fifteen cents an hour, and Jurgis knew that if this was done, his turn
would come soon. He had learned by this time that Packingtown was
really not a number of firms at all, but one great firm, the Beef
Trust. And every week the managers of it got together and compared
notes, and there was one scale for all the workers in the yards and one
standard of efficiency. Jurgis was told that they also fixed the price
they would pay for beef on the hoof and the price of all dressed meat
in the country; but that was something he did not understand or care
about.
The only one who was not afraid of a cut was Marija, who congratulated
herself, somewhat naïvely, that there had been one in her place only a
short time before she came. Marija was getting to be a skilled
beef-trimmer, and was mounting to the heights again. During the summer
and fall Jurgis and Ona managed to pay her back the last penny they
owed her, and so she began to have a bank account. Tamoszius had a bank
account also, and they ran a race, and began to figure upon household
expenses once more.
The possession of vast wealth entails cares and responsibilities,
however, as poor Marija found out. She had taken the advice of a friend
and invested her savings in a bank on Ashland Avenue. Of course she
knew nothing about it, except that it was big and imposing—what
possible chance has a poor foreign working girl to understand the
banking business, as it is conducted in this land of frenzied finance?
So Marija lived in a continual dread lest something should happen to
her bank, and would go out of her way mornings to make sure that it was
still there. Her principal thought was of fire, for she had deposited
her money in bills, and was afraid that if they were burned up the bank
would not give her any others. Jurgis made fun of her for this, for he
was a man and was proud of his superior knowledge, telling her that the
bank had fireproof vaults, and all its millions of dollars hidden
safely away in them.
However, one morning Marija took her usual detour, and, to her horror
and dismay, saw a crowd of people in front of the bank, filling the
avenue solid for half a block. All the blood went out of her face for
terror. She broke into a run, shouting to the people to ask what was
the matter, but not stopping to hear what they answered, till she had
come to where the throng was so dense that she could no longer advance.
There was a “run on the bank,” they told her then, but she did not know
what that was, and turned from one person to another, trying in an
agony of fear to make out what they meant. Had something gone wrong
with the bank? Nobody was sure, but they thought so. Couldn’t she get
her money? There was no telling; the people were afraid not, and they
were all trying to get it. It was too early yet to tell anything—the
bank would not open for nearly three hours. So in a frenzy of despair
Marija began to claw her way toward the doors of this building, through
a throng of men, women, and children, all as excited as herself. It was
a scene of wild confusion, women shrieking and wringing their hands and
fainting, and men fighting and trampling down everything in their way.
In the midst of the mêlée Marija recollected that she did not have her
bankbook, and could not get her money anyway, so she fought her way out
and started on a run for home. This was fortunate for her, for a few
minutes later the police reserves arrived.
In half an hour Marija was back, Teta Elzbieta with her, both of them
breathless with running and sick with fear. The crowd was now formed in
a line, extending for several blocks, with half a hundred policemen
keeping guard, and so there was nothing for them to do but to take
their places at the end of it. At nine o’clock the bank opened and
began to pay the waiting throng; but then, what good did that do
Marija, who saw three thousand people before her—enough to take out the
last penny of a dozen banks?
To make matters worse a drizzling rain came up, and soaked them to the
skin; yet all the morning they stood there, creeping slowly toward the
goal—all the afternoon they stood there, heartsick, seeing that the
hour of closing was coming, and that they were going to be left out.
Marija made up her mind that, come what might, she would stay there and
keep her place; but as nearly all did the same, all through the long,
cold night, she got very little closer to the bank for that. Toward
evening Jurgis came; he had heard the story from the children, and he
brought some food and dry wraps, which made it a little easier.
The next morning, before daybreak, came a bigger crowd than ever, and
more policemen from downtown. Marija held on like grim death, and
toward afternoon she got into the bank and got her money—all in big
silver dollars, a handkerchief full. When she had once got her hands on
them her fear vanished, and she wanted to put them back again; but the
man at the window was savage, and said that the bank would receive no
more deposits from those who had taken part in the run. So Marija was
forced to take her dollars home with her, watching to right and left,
expecting every instant that some one would try to rob her; and when
she got home she was not much better off. Until she could find another
bank there was nothing to do but sew them up in her clothes, and so
Marija went about for a week or more, loaded down with bullion, and
afraid to cross the street in front of the house, because Jurgis told
her she would sink out of sight in the mud. Weighted this way she made
her way to the yards, again in fear, this time to see if she had lost
her place; but fortunately about ten per cent of the working people of
Packingtown had been depositors in that bank, and it was not convenient
to discharge that many at once. The cause of the panic had been the
attempt of a policeman to arrest a drunken man in a saloon next door,
which had drawn a crowd at the hour the people were on their way to
work, and so started the “run.”
About this time Jurgis and Ona also began a bank account. Besides
having paid Jonas and Marija, they had almost paid for their furniture,
and could have that little sum to count on. So long as each of them
could bring home nine or ten dollars a week, they were able to get
along finely. Also election day came round again, and Jurgis made half
a week’s wages out of that, all net profit. It was a very close
election that year, and the echoes of the battle reached even to
Packingtown. The two rival sets of grafters hired halls and set off
fireworks and made speeches, to try to get the people interested in the
matter. Although Jurgis did not understand it all, he knew enough by
this time to realize that it was not supposed to be right to sell your
vote. However, as every one did it, and his refusal to join would not
have made the slightest difference in the results, the idea of refusing
would have seemed absurd, had it ever come into his head.
Now chill winds and shortening days began to warn them that the winter
was coming again. It seemed as if the respite had been too short—they
had not had time enough to get ready for it; but still it came,
inexorably, and the hunted look began to come back into the eyes of
little Stanislovas. The prospect struck fear to the heart of Jurgis
also, for he knew that Ona was not fit to face the cold and the
snowdrifts this year. And suppose that some day when a blizzard struck
them and the cars were not running, Ona should have to give up, and
should come the next day to find that her place had been given to some
one who lived nearer and could be depended on?
It was the week before Christmas that the first storm came, and then
the soul of Jurgis rose up within him like a sleeping lion. There were
four days that the Ashland Avenue cars were stalled, and in those days,
for the first time in his life, Jurgis knew what it was to be really
opposed. He had faced difficulties before, but they had been child’s
play; now there was a death struggle, and all the furies were unchained
within him. The first morning they set out two hours before dawn, Ona
wrapped all in blankets and tossed upon his shoulder like a sack of
meal, and the little boy, bundled nearly out of sight, hanging by his
coat-tails. There was a raging blast beating in his face, and the
thermometer stood below zero; the snow was never short of his knees,
and in some of the drifts it was nearly up to his armpits. It would
catch his feet and try to trip him; it would build itself into a wall
before him to beat him back; and he would fling himself into it,
plunging like a wounded buffalo, puffing and snorting in rage. So foot
by foot he drove his way, and when at last he came to Durham’s he was
staggering and almost blind, and leaned against a pillar, gasping, and
thanking God that the cattle came late to the killing beds that day. In
the evening the same thing had to be done again; and because Jurgis
could not tell what hour of the night he would get off, he got a
saloon-keeper to let Ona sit and wait for him in a corner. Once it was