The Jungle
an alley and break the line, he saw his chance and sprang to seize a
place. Men threatened him and tried to throw him out, but he cursed and
made a disturbance to attract a policeman, upon which they subsided,
knowing that if the latter interfered it would be to “fire” them all.
An hour or two later he entered a room and confronted a big Irishman
behind a desk.
“Ever worked in Chicago before?” the man inquired; and whether it was a
good angel that put it into Jurgis’s mind, or an intuition of his
sharpened wits, he was moved to answer, “No, sir.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Kansas City, sir.”
“Any references?”
“No, sir. I’m just an unskilled man. I’ve got good arms.”
“I want men for hard work—it’s all underground, digging tunnels for
telephones. Maybe it won’t suit you.”
“I’m willing, sir—anything for me. What’s the pay?”
“Fifteen cents an hour.”
“I’m willing, sir.”
“All right; go back there and give your name.”
So within half an hour he was at work, far underneath the streets of
the city. The tunnel was a peculiar one for telephone wires; it was
about eight feet high, and with a level floor nearly as wide. It had
innumerable branches—a perfect spider web beneath the city; Jurgis
walked over half a mile with his gang to the place where they were to
work. Stranger yet, the tunnel was lighted by electricity, and upon it
was laid a double-tracked, narrow-gauge railroad!
But Jurgis was not there to ask questions, and he did not give the
matter a thought. It was nearly a year afterward that he finally
learned the meaning of this whole affair. The City Council had passed a
quiet and innocent little bill allowing a company to construct
telephone conduits under the city streets; and upon the strength of
this, a great corporation had proceeded to tunnel all Chicago with a
system of railway freight-subways. In the city there was a combination
of employers, representing hundreds of millions of capital, and formed
for the purpose of crushing the labor unions. The chief union which
troubled it was the teamsters’; and when these freight tunnels were
completed, connecting all the big factories and stores with the
railroad depots, they would have the teamsters’ union by the throat.
Now and then there were rumors and murmurs in the Board of Aldermen,
and once there was a committee to investigate—but each time another
small fortune was paid over, and the rumors died away; until at last
the city woke up with a start to find the work completed. There was a
tremendous scandal, of course; it was found that the city records had
been falsified and other crimes committed, and some of Chicago’s big
capitalists got into jail—figuratively speaking. The aldermen declared
that they had had no idea of it all, in spite of the fact that the main
entrance to the work had been in the rear of the saloon of one of them.
It was in a newly opened cut that Jurgis worked, and so he knew that he
had an all-winter job. He was so rejoiced that he treated himself to a
spree that night, and with the balance of his money he hired himself a
place in a tenement room, where he slept upon a big homemade straw
mattress along with four other workingmen. This was one dollar a week,
and for four more he got his food in a boardinghouse near his work.
This would leave him four dollars extra each week, an unthinkable sum
for him. At the outset he had to pay for his digging tools, and also to
buy a pair of heavy boots, since his shoes were falling to pieces, and
a flannel shirt, since the one he had worn all summer was in shreds. He
spent a week meditating whether or not he should also buy an overcoat.
There was one belonging to a Hebrew collar button peddler, who had died
in the room next to him, and which the landlady was holding for her
rent; in the end, however, Jurgis decided to do without it, as he was
to be underground by day and in bed at night.
This was an unfortunate decision, however, for it drove him more
quickly than ever into the saloons. From now on Jurgis worked from
seven o’clock until half-past five, with half an hour for dinner; which
meant that he never saw the sunlight on weekdays. In the evenings there
was no place for him to go except a barroom; no place where there was
light and warmth, where he could hear a little music or sit with a
companion and talk. He had now no home to go to; he had no affection
left in his life—only the pitiful mockery of it in the _camaraderie_ of
vice. On Sundays the churches were open—but where was there a church in
which an ill-smelling workingman, with vermin crawling upon his neck,
could sit without seeing people edge away and look annoyed? He had, of
course, his corner in a close though unheated room, with a window
opening upon a blank wall two feet away; and also he had the bare
streets, with the winter gales sweeping through them; besides this he
had only the saloons—and, of course, he had to drink to stay in them.
If he drank now and then he was free to make himself at home, to gamble
with dice or a pack of greasy cards, to play at a dingy pool table for
money, or to look at a beer-stained pink “sporting paper,” with
pictures of murderers and half-naked women. It was for such pleasures
as these that he spent his money; and such was his life during the six
weeks and a half that he toiled for the merchants of Chicago, to enable
them to break the grip of their teamsters’ union.
In a work thus carried out, not much thought was given to the welfare
of the laborers. On an average, the tunneling cost a life a day and
several manglings; it was seldom, however, that more than a dozen or
two men heard of any one accident. The work was all done by the new
boring machinery, with as little blasting as possible; but there would
be falling rocks and crushed supports, and premature explosions—and in
addition all the dangers of railroading. So it was that one night, as
Jurgis was on his way out with his gang, an engine and a loaded car
dashed round one of the innumerable right-angle branches and struck him
upon the shoulder, hurling him against the concrete wall and knocking
him senseless.
When he opened his eyes again it was to the clanging of the bell of an
ambulance. He was lying in it, covered by a blanket, and it was
threading its way slowly through the holiday-shopping crowds. They took
him to the county hospital, where a young surgeon set his arm; then he
was washed and laid upon a bed in a ward with a score or two more of
maimed and mangled men.
Jurgis spent his Christmas in this hospital, and it was the pleasantest
Christmas he had had in America. Every year there were scandals and
investigations in this institution, the newspapers charging that
doctors were allowed to try fantastic experiments upon the patients;
but Jurgis knew nothing of this—his only complaint was that they used
to feed him upon tinned meat, which no man who had ever worked in
Packingtown would feed to his dog. Jurgis had often wondered just who
ate the canned corned beef and “roast beef” of the stockyards; now he
began to understand—that it was what you might call “graft meat,” put
up to be sold to public officials and contractors, and eaten by
soldiers and sailors, prisoners and inmates of institutions,
“shantymen” and gangs of railroad laborers.
Jurgis was ready to leave the hospital at the end of two weeks. This
did not mean that his arm was strong and that he was able to go back to
work, but simply that he could get along without further attention, and
that his place was needed for some one worse off than he. That he was
utterly helpless, and had no means of keeping himself alive in the
meantime, was something which did not concern the hospital authorities,
nor any one else in the city.
As it chanced, he had been hurt on a Monday, and had just paid for his
last week’s board and his room rent, and spent nearly all the balance
of his Saturday’s pay. He had less than seventy-five cents in his
pockets, and a dollar and a half due him for the day’s work he had done
before he was hurt. He might possibly have sued the company, and got
some damages for his injuries, but he did not know this, and it was not
the company’s business to tell him. He went and got his pay and his
tools, which he left in a pawnshop for fifty cents. Then he went to his
landlady, who had rented his place and had no other for him; and then
to his boardinghouse keeper, who looked him over and questioned him. As
he must certainly be helpless for a couple of months, and had boarded
there only six weeks, she decided very quickly that it would not be
worth the risk to keep him on trust.
So Jurgis went out into the streets, in a most dreadful plight. It was
bitterly cold, and a heavy snow was falling, beating into his face. He
had no overcoat, and no place to go, and two dollars and sixty-five
cents in his pocket, with the certainty that he could not earn another
cent for months. The snow meant no chance to him now; he must walk
along and see others shoveling, vigorous and active—and he with his
left arm bound to his side! He could not hope to tide himself over by
odd jobs of loading trucks; he could not even sell newspapers or carry
satchels, because he was now at the mercy of any rival. Words could not
paint the terror that came over him as he realized all this. He was
like a wounded animal in the forest; he was forced to compete with his
enemies upon unequal terms. There would be no consideration for him
because of his weakness—it was no one’s business to help him in such
distress, to make the fight the least bit easier for him. Even if he
took to begging, he would be at a disadvantage, for reasons which he
was to discover in good time.
In the beginning he could not think of anything except getting out of
the awful cold. He went into one of the saloons he had been wont to
frequent and bought a drink, and then stood by the fire shivering and
waiting to be ordered out. According to an unwritten law, the buying a
drink included the privilege of loafing for just so long; then one had
to buy another drink or move on. That Jurgis was an old customer
entitled him to a somewhat longer stop; but then he had been away two
weeks, and was evidently “on the bum.” He might plead and tell his
“hard luck story,” but that would not help him much; a saloon-keeper
who was to be moved by such means would soon have his place jammed to
the doors with “hoboes” on a day like this.
So Jurgis went out into another place, and paid another nickel. He was
so hungry this time that he could not resist the hot beef stew, an
indulgence which cut short his stay by a considerable time. When he was
again told to move on, he made his way to a “tough” place in the
“Lêvée” district, where now and then he had gone with a certain
rat-eyed Bohemian workingman of his acquaintance, seeking a woman. It
was Jurgis’s vain hope that here the proprietor would let him remain as
a “sitter.” In low-class places, in the dead of winter, saloon-keepers
would often allow one or two forlorn-looking bums who came in covered
with snow or soaked with rain to sit by the fire and look miserable to
attract custom. A workingman would come in, feeling cheerful after his
day’s work was over, and it would trouble him to have to take his glass
with such a sight under his nose; and so he would call out: “Hello,
Bub, what’s the matter? You look as if you’d been up against it!” And
then the other would begin to pour out some tale of misery, and the man
would say, “Come have a glass, and maybe that’ll brace you up.” And so
they would drink together, and if the tramp was sufficiently
wretched-looking, or good enough at the “gab,” they might have two; and
if they were to discover that they were from the same country, or had