The Jungle
“I can arrange that all right,” said the other—“though it may cost you
a few dollars, of course. But what was the trouble?”
“It was a man that did me a mean trick once,” answered Jurgis.
“Who is he?”
“He’s a foreman in Brown’s or used to be. His name’s Connor.”
And the other gave a start. “Connor!” he cried. “Not Phil Connor!”
“Yes,” said Jurgis, “that’s the fellow. Why?”
“Good God!” exclaimed the other, “then you’re in for it, old man! _I_
can’t help you!”
“Not help me! Why not?”
“Why, he’s one of Scully’s biggest men—he’s a member of the War-Whoop
League, and they talked of sending him to the legislature! Phil Connor!
Great heavens!”
Jurgis sat dumb with dismay.
“Why, he can send you to Joliet, if he wants to!” declared the other.
“Can’t I have Scully get me off before he finds out about it?” asked
Jurgis, at length.
“But Scully’s out of town,” the other answered. “I don’t even know
where he is—he’s run away to dodge the strike.”
That was a pretty mess, indeed. Poor Jurgis sat half-dazed. His pull
had run up against a bigger pull, and he was down and out! “But what am
I going to do?” he asked, weakly.
“How should I know?” said the other. “I shouldn’t even dare to get bail
for you—why, I might ruin myself for life!”
Again there was silence. “Can’t you do it for me,” Jurgis asked, “and
pretend that you didn’t know who I’d hit?”
“But what good would that do you when you came to stand trial?” asked
Harper. Then he sat buried in thought for a minute or two. “There’s
nothing—unless it’s this,” he said. “I could have your bail reduced;
and then if you had the money you could pay it and skip.”
“How much will it be?” Jurgis asked, after he had had this explained
more in detail.
“I don’t know,” said the other. “How much do you own?”
“I’ve got about three hundred dollars,” was the answer.
“Well,” was Harper’s reply, “I’m not sure, but I’ll try and get you off
for that. I’ll take the risk for friendship’s sake—for I’d hate to see
you sent to state’s prison for a year or two.”
And so finally Jurgis ripped out his bankbook—which was sewed up in his
trousers—and signed an order, which “Bush” Harper wrote, for all the
money to be paid out. Then the latter went and got it, and hurried to
the court, and explained to the magistrate that Jurgis was a decent
fellow and a friend of Scully’s, who had been attacked by a
strike-breaker. So the bail was reduced to three hundred dollars, and
Harper went on it himself; he did not tell this to Jurgis, however—nor
did he tell him that when the time for trial came it would be an easy
matter for him to avoid the forfeiting of the bail, and pocket the
three hundred dollars as his reward for the risk of offending Mike
Scully! All that he told Jurgis was that he was now free, and that the
best thing he could do was to clear out as quickly as possible; and so
Jurgis overwhelmed with gratitude and relief, took the dollar and
fourteen cents that was left him out of all his bank account, and put
it with the two dollars and quarter that was left from his last night’s
celebration, and boarded a streetcar and got off at the other end of
Chicago.
CHAPTER XXVII
Poor Jurgis was now an outcast and a tramp once more. He was
crippled—he was as literally crippled as any wild animal which has lost
its claws, or been torn out of its shell. He had been shorn, at one
cut, of all those mysterious weapons whereby he had been able to make a
living easily and to escape the consequences of his actions. He could
no longer command a job when he wanted it; he could no longer steal
with impunity—he must take his chances with the common herd. Nay worse,
he dared not mingle with the herd—he must hide himself, for he was one
marked out for destruction. His old companions would betray him, for
the sake of the influence they would gain thereby; and he would be made
to suffer, not merely for the offense he had committed, but for others
which would be laid at his door, just as had been done for some poor
devil on the occasion of that assault upon the “country customer” by
him and Duane.
And also he labored under another handicap now. He had acquired new
standards of living, which were not easily to be altered. When he had
been out of work before, he had been content if he could sleep in a
doorway or under a truck out of the rain, and if he could get fifteen
cents a day for saloon lunches. But now he desired all sorts of other
things, and suffered because he had to do without them. He must have a
drink now and then, a drink for its own sake, and apart from the food
that came with it. The craving for it was strong enough to master every
other consideration—he would have it, though it were his last nickel
and he had to starve the balance of the day in consequence.
Jurgis became once more a besieger of factory gates. But never since he
had been in Chicago had he stood less chance of getting a job than just
then. For one thing, there was the economic crisis, the million or two
of men who had been out of work in the spring and summer, and were not
yet all back, by any means. And then there was the strike, with seventy
thousand men and women all over the country idle for a couple of
months—twenty thousand in Chicago, and many of them now seeking work
throughout the city. It did not remedy matters that a few days later
the strike was given up and about half the strikers went back to work;
for every one taken on, there was a “scab” who gave up and fled. The
ten or fifteen thousand “green” Negroes, foreigners, and criminals were
now being turned loose to shift for themselves. Everywhere Jurgis went
he kept meeting them, and he was in an agony of fear lest some one of
them should know that he was “wanted.” He would have left Chicago, only
by the time he had realized his danger he was almost penniless; and it
would be better to go to jail than to be caught out in the country in
the winter time.
At the end of about ten days Jurgis had only a few pennies left; and he
had not yet found a job—not even a day’s work at anything, not a chance
to carry a satchel. Once again, as when he had come out of the
hospital, he was bound hand and foot, and facing the grisly phantom of
starvation. Raw, naked terror possessed him, a maddening passion that
would never leave him, and that wore him down more quickly than the
actual want of food. He was going to die of hunger! The fiend reached
out its scaly arms for him—it touched him, its breath came into his
face; and he would cry out for the awfulness of it, he would wake up in
the night, shuddering, and bathed in perspiration, and start up and
flee. He would walk, begging for work, until he was exhausted; he could
not remain still—he would wander on, gaunt and haggard, gazing about
him with restless eyes. Everywhere he went, from one end of the vast
city to the other, there were hundreds of others like him; everywhere
was the sight of plenty and the merciless hand of authority waving them
away. There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and
everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where
the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.
When he was down to his last quarter, Jurgis learned that before the
bakeshops closed at night they sold out what was left at half price,
and after that he would go and get two loaves of stale bread for a
nickel, and break them up and stuff his pockets with them, munching a
bit from time to time. He would not spend a penny save for this; and,
after two or three days more, he even became sparing of the bread, and
would stop and peer into the ash barrels as he walked along the
streets, and now and then rake out a bit of something, shake it free
from dust, and count himself just so many minutes further from the end.
So for several days he had been going about, ravenous all the time, and
growing weaker and weaker, and then one morning he had a hideous
experience, that almost broke his heart. He was passing down a street
lined with warehouses, and a boss offered him a job, and then, after he
had started to work, turned him off because he was not strong enough.
And he stood by and saw another man put into his place, and then picked
up his coat, and walked off, doing all that he could to keep from
breaking down and crying like a baby. He was lost! He was doomed! There
was no hope for him! But then, with a sudden rush, his fear gave place
to rage. He fell to cursing. He would come back there after dark, and
he would show that scoundrel whether he was good for anything or not!
He was still muttering this when suddenly, at the corner, he came upon
a green-grocery, with a tray full of cabbages in front of it. Jurgis,
after one swift glance about him, stooped and seized the biggest of
them, and darted round the corner with it. There was a hue and cry, and
a score of men and boys started in chase of him; but he came to an
alley, and then to another branching off from it and leading him into
another street, where he fell into a walk, and slipped his cabbage
under his coat and went off unsuspected in the crowd. When he had
gotten a safe distance away he sat down and devoured half the cabbage
raw, stowing the balance away in his pockets till the next day.
Just about this time one of the Chicago newspapers, which made much of
the “common people,” opened a “free-soup kitchen” for the benefit of
the unemployed. Some people said that they did this for the sake of the
advertising it gave them, and some others said that their motive was a
fear lest all their readers should be starved off; but whatever the
reason, the soup was thick and hot, and there was a bowl for every man,
all night long. When Jurgis heard of this, from a fellow “hobo,” he
vowed that he would have half a dozen bowls before morning; but, as it
proved, he was lucky to get one, for there was a line of men two blocks
long before the stand, and there was just as long a line when the place
was finally closed up.
This depot was within the danger line for Jurgis—in the “Lêvée”
district, where he was known; but he went there, all the same, for he
was desperate, and beginning to think of even the Bridewell as a place
of refuge. So far the weather had been fair, and he had slept out every
night in a vacant lot; but now there fell suddenly a shadow of the
advancing winter, a chill wind from the north and a driving storm of
rain. That day Jurgis bought two drinks for the sake of the shelter,
and at night he spent his last two pennies in a “stale-beer dive.” This
was a place kept by a Negro, who went out and drew off the old dregs of
beer that lay in barrels set outside of the saloons; and after he had
doctored it with chemicals to make it “fizz,” he sold it for two cents
a can, the purchase of a can including the privilege of sleeping the
night through upon the floor, with a mass of degraded outcasts, men and
women.
All these horrors afflicted Jurgis all the more cruelly, because he was
always contrasting them with the opportunities he had lost. For
instance, just now it was election time again—within five or six weeks
the voters of the country would select a President; and he heard the
wretches with whom he associated discussing it, and saw the streets of
the city decorated with placards and banners—and what words could
describe the pangs of grief and despair that shot through him?
For instance, there was a night during this cold spell. He had begged
all day, for his very life, and found not a soul to heed him, until
toward evening he saw an old lady getting off a streetcar and helped
her down with her umbrellas and bundles and then told her his
“hard-luck story,” and after answering all her suspicious questions
satisfactorily, was taken to a restaurant and saw a quarter paid down