The Jungle
sound; he sat motionless and shuddering with his anguish. He had never
dreamed how much he loved Ona, until now that she was gone; until now
that he sat here, knowing that on the morrow they would take her away,
and that he would never lay eyes upon her again—never all the days of
his life. His old love, which had been starved to death, beaten to
death, awoke in him again; the floodgates of memory were lifted—he saw
all their life together, saw her as he had seen her in Lithuania, the
first day at the fair, beautiful as the flowers, singing like a bird.
He saw her as he had married her, with all her tenderness, with her
heart of wonder; the very words she had spoken seemed to ring now in
his ears, the tears she had shed to be wet upon his cheek. The long,
cruel battle with misery and hunger had hardened and embittered him,
but it had not changed her—she had been the same hungry soul to the
end, stretching out her arms to him, pleading with him, begging him for
love and tenderness. And she had suffered—so cruelly she had suffered,
such agonies, such infamies—ah, God, the memory of them was not to be
borne. What a monster of wickedness, of heartlessness, he had been!
Every angry word that he had ever spoken came back to him and cut him
like a knife; every selfish act that he had done—with what torments he
paid for them now! And such devotion and awe as welled up in his
soul—now that it could never be spoken, now that it was too late, too
late! His bosom-was choking with it, bursting with it; he crouched here
in the darkness beside her, stretching out his arms to her—and she was
gone forever, she was dead! He could have screamed aloud with the
horror and despair of it; a sweat of agony beaded his forehead, yet he
dared not make a sound—he scarcely dared to breathe, because of his
shame and loathing of himself.
Late at night came Elzbieta, having gotten the money for a mass, and
paid for it in advance, lest she should be tempted too sorely at home.
She brought also a bit of stale rye bread that some one had given her,
and with that they quieted the children and got them to sleep. Then she
came over to Jurgis and sat down beside him.
She said not a word of reproach—she and Marija had chosen that course
before; she would only plead with him, here by the corpse of his dead
wife. Already Elzbieta had choked down her tears, grief being crowded
out of her soul by fear. She had to bury one of her children—but then
she had done it three times before, and each time risen up and gone
back to take up the battle for the rest. Elzbieta was one of the
primitive creatures: like the angleworm, which goes on living though
cut in half; like a hen, which, deprived of her chickens one by one,
will mother the last that is left her. She did this because it was her
nature—she asked no questions about the justice of it, nor the
worth-whileness of life in which destruction and death ran riot.
And this old common-sense view she labored to impress upon Jurgis,
pleading with him with tears in her eyes. Ona was dead, but the others
were left and they must be saved. She did not ask for her own children.
She and Marija could care for them somehow, but there was Antanas, his
own son. Ona had given Antanas to him—the little fellow was the only
remembrance of her that he had; he must treasure it and protect it, he
must show himself a man. He knew what Ona would have had him do, what
she would ask of him at this moment, if she could speak to him. It was
a terrible thing that she should have died as she had; but the life had
been too hard for her, and she had to go. It was terrible that they
were not able to bury her, that he could not even have a day to mourn
her—but so it was. Their fate was pressing; they had not a cent, and
the children would perish—some money must be had. Could he not be a man
for Ona’s sake, and pull himself together? In a little while they would
be out of danger—now that they had given up the house they could live
more cheaply, and with all the children working they could get along,
if only he would not go to pieces. So Elzbieta went on, with feverish
intensity. It was a struggle for life with her; she was not afraid that
Jurgis would go on drinking, for he had no money for that, but she was
wild with dread at the thought that he might desert them, might take to
the road, as Jonas had done.
But with Ona’s dead body beneath his eyes, Jurgis could not well think
of treason to his child. Yes, he said, he would try, for the sake of
Antanas. He would give the little fellow his chance—would get to work
at once, yes, tomorrow, without even waiting for Ona to be buried. They
might trust him, he would keep his word, come what might.
And so he was out before daylight the next morning, headache,
heartache, and all. He went straight to Graham’s fertilizer mill, to
see if he could get back his job. But the boss shook his head when he
saw him—no, his place had been filled long ago, and there was no room
for him.
“Do you think there will be?” Jurgis asked. “I may have to wait.”
“No,” said the other, “it will not be worth your while to wait—there
will be nothing for you here.”
Jurgis stood gazing at him in perplexity. “What is the matter?” he
asked. “Didn’t I do my work?”
The other met his look with one of cold indifference, and answered,
“There will be nothing for you here, I said.”
Jurgis had his suspicions as to the dreadful meaning of that incident,
and he went away with a sinking at the heart. He went and took his
stand with the mob of hungry wretches who were standing about in the
snow before the time station. Here he stayed, breakfastless, for two
hours, until the throng was driven away by the clubs of the police.
There was no work for him that day.
Jurgis had made a good many acquaintances in his long services at the
yards—there were saloonkeepers who would trust him for a drink and a
sandwich, and members of his old union who would lend him a dime at a
pinch. It was not a question of life and death for him, therefore; he
might hunt all day, and come again on the morrow, and try hanging on
thus for weeks, like hundreds and thousands of others. Meantime, Teta
Elzbieta would go and beg, over in the Hyde Park district, and the
children would bring home enough to pacify Aniele, and keep them all
alive.
It was at the end of a week of this sort of waiting, roaming about in
the bitter winds or loafing in saloons, that Jurgis stumbled on a
chance in one of the cellars of Jones’s big packing plant. He saw a
foreman passing the open doorway, and hailed him for a job.
“Push a truck?” inquired the man, and Jurgis answered, “Yes, sir!”
before the words were well out of his mouth.
“What’s your name?” demanded the other.
“Jurgis Rudkus.”
“Worked in the yards before?”
“Yes.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Two places—Brown’s killing beds and Durham’s fertilizer mill.”
“Why did you leave there?”
“The first time I had an accident, and the last time I was sent up for
a month.”
“I see. Well, I’ll give you a trial. Come early tomorrow and ask for
Mr. Thomas.”
So Jurgis rushed home with the wild tidings that he had a job—that the
terrible siege was over. The remnants of the family had quite a
celebration that night; and in the morning Jurgis was at the place half
an hour before the time of opening. The foreman came in shortly
afterward, and when he saw Jurgis he frowned.
“Oh,” he said, “I promised you a job, didn’t I?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jurgis.
“Well, I’m sorry, but I made a mistake. I can’t use you.”
Jurgis stared, dumfounded. “What’s the matter?” he gasped.
“Nothing,” said the man, “only I can’t use you.”
There was the same cold, hostile stare that he had had from the boss of
the fertilizer mill. He knew that there was no use in saying a word,
and he turned and went away.
Out in the saloons the men could tell him all about the meaning of it;
they gazed at him with pitying eyes—poor devil, he was blacklisted!
What had he done? they asked—knocked down his boss? Good heavens, then
he might have known! Why, he stood as much chance of getting a job in
Packingtown as of being chosen mayor of Chicago. Why had he wasted his
time hunting? They had him on a secret list in every office, big and
little, in the place. They had his name by this time in St. Louis and
New York, in Omaha and Boston, in Kansas City and St. Joseph. He was
condemned and sentenced, without trial and without appeal; he could
never work for the packers again—he could not even clean cattle pens or
drive a truck in any place where they controlled. He might try it, if
he chose, as hundreds had tried it, and found out for themselves. He
would never be told anything about it; he would never get any more
satisfaction than he had gotten just now; but he would always find when
the time came that he was not needed. It would not do for him to give
any other name, either—they had company “spotters” for just that
purpose, and he wouldn’t keep a job in Packingtown three days. It was
worth a fortune to the packers to keep their blacklist effective, as a
warning to the men and a means of keeping down union agitation and
political discontent.
Jurgis went home, carrying these new tidings to the family council. It
was a most cruel thing; here in this district was his home, such as it
was, the place he was used to and the friends he knew—and now every
possibility of employment in it was closed to him. There was nothing in
Packingtown but packing houses; and so it was the same thing as
evicting him from his home.
He and the two women spent all day and half the night discussing it. It
would be convenient, downtown, to the children’s place of work; but
then Marija was on the road to recovery, and had hopes of getting a job
in the yards; and though she did not see her old-time lover once a
month, because of the misery of their state, yet she could not make up
her mind to go away and give him up forever. Then, too, Elzbieta had
heard something about a chance to scrub floors in Durham’s offices and
was waiting every day for word. In the end it was decided that Jurgis
should go downtown to strike out for himself, and they would decide
after he got a job. As there was no one from whom he could borrow
there, and he dared not beg for fear of being arrested, it was arranged
that every day he should meet one of the children and be given fifteen
cents of their earnings, upon which he could keep going. Then all day
he was to pace the streets with hundreds and thousands of other
homeless wretches inquiring at stores, warehouses, and factories for a
chance; and at night he was to crawl into some doorway or underneath a
truck, and hide there until midnight, when he might get into one of the
station houses, and spread a newspaper upon the floor, and lie down in
the midst of a throng of “bums” and beggars, reeking with alcohol and
tobacco, and filthy with vermin and disease.
So for two weeks more Jurgis fought with the demon of despair. Once he
got a chance to load a truck for half a day, and again he carried an
old woman’s valise and was given a quarter. This let him into a
lodging-house on several nights when he might otherwise have frozen to
death; and it also gave him a chance now and then to buy a newspaper in
the morning and hunt up jobs while his rivals were watching and waiting
for a paper to be thrown away. This, however, was really not the
advantage it seemed, for the newspaper advertisements were a cause of
much loss of precious time and of many weary journeys. A full half of
these were “fakes,” put in by the endless variety of establishments
which preyed upon the helpless ignorance of the unemployed. If Jurgis
lost only his time, it was because he had nothing else to lose;
whenever a smooth-tongued agent would tell him of the wonderful