The Jungle
bear, and it looked as if a strike might begin any week.
After this talk the man made inquiries concerning Jurgis, and a couple
of days later he came to him with an interesting proposition. He was
not absolutely certain, he said, but he thought that he could get him a
regular salary if he would come to Packingtown and do as he was told,
and keep his mouth shut. Harper—“Bush” Harper, he was called—was a
right-hand man of Mike Scully, the Democratic boss of the stockyards;
and in the coming election there was a peculiar situation. There had
come to Scully a proposition to nominate a certain rich brewer who
lived upon a swell boulevard that skirted the district, and who coveted
the big badge and the “honorable” of an alderman. The brewer was a Jew,
and had no brains, but he was harmless, and would put up a rare
campaign fund. Scully had accepted the offer, and then gone to the
Republicans with a proposition. He was not sure that he could manage
the “sheeny,” and he did not mean to take any chances with his
district; let the Republicans nominate a certain obscure but amiable
friend of Scully’s, who was now setting tenpins in the cellar of an
Ashland Avenue saloon, and he, Scully, would elect him with the
“sheeny’s” money, and the Republicans might have the glory, which was
more than they would get otherwise. In return for this the Republicans
would agree to put up no candidate the following year, when Scully
himself came up for reelection as the other alderman from the ward. To
this the Republicans had assented at once; but the hell of it was—so
Harper explained—that the Republicans were all of them fools—a man had
to be a fool to be a Republican in the stockyards, where Scully was
king. And they didn’t know how to work, and of course it would not do
for the Democratic workers, the noble redskins of the War Whoop League,
to support the Republican openly. The difficulty would not have been so
great except for another fact—there had been a curious development in
stockyards politics in the last year or two, a new party having leaped
into being. They were the Socialists; and it was a devil of a mess,
said “Bush” Harper. The one image which the word “Socialist” brought to
Jurgis was of poor little Tamoszius Kuszleika, who had called himself
one, and would go out with a couple of other men and a soap-box, and
shout himself hoarse on a street corner Saturday nights. Tamoszius had
tried to explain to Jurgis what it was all about, but Jurgis, who was
not of an imaginative turn, had never quite got it straight; at present
he was content with his companion’s explanation that the Socialists
were the enemies of American institutions—could not be bought, and
would not combine or make any sort of a “dicker.” Mike Scully was very
much worried over the opportunity which his last deal gave to them—the
stockyards Democrats were furious at the idea of a rich capitalist for
their candidate, and while they were changing they might possibly
conclude that a Socialist firebrand was preferable to a Republican bum.
And so right here was a chance for Jurgis to make himself a place in
the world, explained “Bush” Harper; he had been a union man, and he was
known in the yards as a workingman; he must have hundreds of
acquaintances, and as he had never talked politics with them he might
come out as a Republican now without exciting the least suspicion.
There were barrels of money for the use of those who could deliver the
goods; and Jurgis might count upon Mike Scully, who had never yet gone
back on a friend. Just what could he do? Jurgis asked, in some
perplexity, and the other explained in detail. To begin with, he would
have to go to the yards and work, and he mightn’t relish that; but he
would have what he earned, as well as the rest that came to him. He
would get active in the union again, and perhaps try to get an office,
as he, Harper, had; he would tell all his friends the good points of
Doyle, the Republican nominee, and the bad ones of the “sheeny”; and
then Scully would furnish a meeting place, and he would start the
“Young Men’s Republican Association,” or something of that sort, and
have the rich brewer’s best beer by the hogshead, and fireworks and
speeches, just like the War Whoop League. Surely Jurgis must know
hundreds of men who would like that sort of fun; and there would be the
regular Republican leaders and workers to help him out, and they would
deliver a big enough majority on election day.
When he had heard all this explanation to the end, Jurgis demanded:
“But how can I get a job in Packingtown? I’m blacklisted.”
At which “Bush” Harper laughed. “I’ll attend to that all right,” he
said.
And the other replied, “It’s a go, then; I’m your man.” So Jurgis went
out to the stockyards again, and was introduced to the political lord
of the district, the boss of Chicago’s mayor. It was Scully who owned
the brick-yards and the dump and the ice pond—though Jurgis did not
know it. It was Scully who was to blame for the unpaved street in which
Jurgis’s child had been drowned; it was Scully who had put into office
the magistrate who had first sent Jurgis to jail; it was Scully who was
principal stockholder in the company which had sold him the ramshackle
tenement, and then robbed him of it. But Jurgis knew none of these
things—any more than he knew that Scully was but a tool and puppet of
the packers. To him Scully was a mighty power, the “biggest” man he had
ever met.
He was a little, dried-up Irishman, whose hands shook. He had a brief
talk with his visitor, watching him with his ratlike eyes, and making
up his mind about him; and then he gave him a note to Mr. Harmon, one
of the head managers of Durham’s—
“The bearer, Jurgis Rudkus, is a particular friend of mine, and I would
like you to find him a good place, for important reasons. He was once
indiscreet, but you will perhaps be so good as to overlook that.”
Mr. Harmon looked up inquiringly when he read this. “What does he mean
by ‘indiscreet’?” he asked.
“I was blacklisted, sir,” said Jurgis.
At which the other frowned. “Blacklisted?” he said. “How do you mean?”
And Jurgis turned red with embarrassment.
He had forgotten that a blacklist did not exist. “I—that is—I had
difficulty in getting a place,” he stammered.
“What was the matter?”
“I got into a quarrel with a foreman—not my own boss, sir—and struck
him.”
“I see,” said the other, and meditated for a few moments. “What do you
wish to do?” he asked.
“Anything, sir,” said Jurgis—“only I had a broken arm this winter, and
so I have to be careful.”
“How would it suit you to be a night watchman?”
“That wouldn’t do, sir. I have to be among the men at night.”
“I see—politics. Well, would it suit you to trim hogs?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jurgis.
And Mr. Harmon called a timekeeper and said, “Take this man to Pat
Murphy and tell him to find room for him somehow.”
And so Jurgis marched into the hog-killing room, a place where, in the
days gone by, he had come begging for a job. Now he walked jauntily,
and smiled to himself, seeing the frown that came to the boss’s face as
the timekeeper said, “Mr. Harmon says to put this man on.” It would
overcrowd his department and spoil the record he was trying to make—but
he said not a word except “All right.”
And so Jurgis became a workingman once more; and straightway he sought
out his old friends, and joined the union, and began to “root” for
“Scotty” Doyle. Doyle had done him a good turn once, he explained, and
was really a bully chap; Doyle was a workingman himself, and would
represent the workingmen—why did they want to vote for a millionaire
“sheeny,” and what the hell had Mike Scully ever done for them that
they should back his candidates all the time? And meantime Scully had
given Jurgis a note to the Republican leader of the ward, and he had
gone there and met the crowd he was to work with. Already they had
hired a big hall, with some of the brewer’s money, and every night
Jurgis brought in a dozen new members of the “Doyle Republican
Association.” Pretty soon they had a grand opening night; and there was
a brass band, which marched through the streets, and fireworks and
bombs and red lights in front of the hall; and there was an enormous
crowd, with two overflow meetings—so that the pale and trembling
candidate had to recite three times over the little speech which one of
Scully’s henchmen had written, and which he had been a month learning
by heart. Best of all, the famous and eloquent Senator Spareshanks,
presidential candidate, rode out in an automobile to discuss the sacred
privileges of American citizenship, and protection and prosperity for
the American workingman. His inspiriting address was quoted to the
extent of half a column in all the morning newspapers, which also said
that it could be stated upon excellent authority that the unexpected
popularity developed by Doyle, the Republican candidate for alderman,
was giving great anxiety to Mr. Scully, the chairman of the Democratic
City Committee.
The chairman was still more worried when the monster torchlight
procession came off, with the members of the Doyle Republican
Association all in red capes and hats, and free beer for every voter in
the ward—the best beer ever given away in a political campaign, as the
whole electorate testified. During this parade, and at innumerable
cart-tail meetings as well, Jurgis labored tirelessly. He did not make
any speeches—there were lawyers and other experts for that—but he
helped to manage things; distributing notices and posting placards and
bringing out the crowds; and when the show was on he attended to the
fireworks and the beer. Thus in the course of the campaign he handled
many hundreds of dollars of the Hebrew brewer’s money, administering it
with naïve and touching fidelity. Toward the end, however, he learned
that he was regarded with hatred by the rest of the “boys,” because he
compelled them either to make a poorer showing than he or to do without
their share of the pie. After that Jurgis did his best to please them,
and to make up for the time he had lost before he discovered the extra
bungholes of the campaign barrel.
He pleased Mike Scully, also. On election morning he was out at four
o’clock, “getting out the vote”; he had a two-horse carriage to ride
in, and he went from house to house for his friends, and escorted them
in triumph to the polls. He voted half a dozen times himself, and voted
some of his friends as often; he brought bunch after bunch of the
newest foreigners—Lithuanians, Poles, Bohemians, Slovaks—and when he
had put them through the mill he turned them over to another man to
take to the next polling place. When Jurgis first set out, the captain
of the precinct gave him a hundred dollars, and three times in the
course of the day he came for another hundred, and not more than
twenty-five out of each lot got stuck in his own pocket. The balance
all went for actual votes, and on a day of Democratic landslides they
elected “Scotty” Doyle, the ex-tenpin setter, by nearly a thousand
plurality—and beginning at five o’clock in the afternoon, and ending at
three the next morning, Jurgis treated himself to a most unholy and
horrible “jag.” Nearly every one else in Packingtown did the same,
however, for there was universal exultation over this triumph of
popular government, this crushing defeat of an arrogant plutocrat by
the power of the common people.
CHAPTER XXVI
After the elections Jurgis stayed on in Packingtown and kept his job.
The agitation to break up the police protection of criminals was
continuing, and it seemed to him best to “lay low” for the present. He
had nearly three hundred dollars in the bank, and might have considered
himself entitled to a vacation; but he had an easy job, and force of