The Jungle
if nothing else ever had interested him, or ever could interest him,
all his life. He imagined the angry exclamations, the hostile glances;
he imagined the policeman striding toward him—reaching for his neck. Or
was he to have one more chance? Were they going to let him alone this
time? He sat trembling; waiting—
And then suddenly came a voice in his ear, a woman’s voice, gentle and
sweet, “If you would try to listen, comrade, perhaps you would be
interested.”
Jurgis was more startled by that than he would have been by the touch
of a policeman. He still kept his eyes fixed ahead, and did not stir;
but his heart gave a great leap. Comrade! Who was it that called him
“comrade”?
He waited long, long; and at last, when he was sure that he was no
longer watched, he stole a glance out of the corner of his eyes at the
woman who sat beside him. She was young and beautiful; she wore fine
clothes, and was what is called a “lady.” And she called him “comrade”!
He turned a little, carefully, so that he could see her better; then he
began to watch her, fascinated. She had apparently forgotten all about
him, and was looking toward the platform. A man was speaking
there—Jurgis heard his voice vaguely; but all his thoughts were for
this woman’s face. A feeling of alarm stole over him as he stared at
her. It made his flesh creep. What was the matter with her, what could
be going on, to affect any one like that? She sat as one turned to
stone, her hands clenched tightly in her lap, so tightly that he could
see the cords standing out in her wrists. There was a look of
excitement upon her face, of tense effort, as of one struggling
mightily, or witnessing a struggle. There was a faint quivering of her
nostrils; and now and then she would moisten her lips with feverish
haste. Her bosom rose and fell as she breathed, and her excitement
seemed to mount higher and higher, and then to sink away again, like a
boat tossing upon ocean surges. What was it? What was the matter? It
must be something that the man was saying, up there on the platform.
What sort of a man was he? And what sort of thing was this, anyhow?—So
all at once it occurred to Jurgis to look at the speaker.
It was like coming suddenly upon some wild sight of nature—a mountain
forest lashed by a tempest, a ship tossed about upon a stormy sea.
Jurgis had an unpleasant sensation, a sense of confusion, of disorder,
of wild and meaningless uproar. The man was tall and gaunt, as haggard
as his auditor himself; a thin black beard covered half of his face,
and one could see only two black hollows where the eyes were. He was
speaking rapidly, in great excitement; he used many gestures—as he
spoke he moved here and there upon the stage, reaching with his long
arms as if to seize each person in his audience. His voice was deep,
like an organ; it was some time, however, before Jurgis thought of the
voice—he was too much occupied with his eyes to think of what the man
was saying. But suddenly it seemed as if the speaker had begun pointing
straight at him, as if he had singled him out particularly for his
remarks; and so Jurgis became suddenly aware of his voice, trembling,
vibrant with emotion, with pain and longing, with a burden of things
unutterable, not to be compassed by words. To hear it was to be
suddenly arrested, to be gripped, transfixed.
“You listen to these things,” the man was saying, “and you say, ‘Yes,
they are true, but they have been that way always.’ Or you say, ‘Maybe
it will come, but not in my time—it will not help me.’ And so you
return to your daily round of toil, you go back to be ground up for
profits in the world-wide mill of economic might! To toil long hours
for another’s advantage; to live in mean and squalid homes, to work in
dangerous and unhealthful places; to wrestle with the specters of
hunger and privation, to take your chances of accident, disease, and
death. And each day the struggle becomes fiercer, the pace more cruel;
each day you have to toil a little harder, and feel the iron hand of
circumstance close upon you a little tighter. Months pass, years
maybe—and then you come again; and again I am here to plead with you,
to know if want and misery have yet done their work with you, if
injustice and oppression have yet opened your eyes! I shall still be
waiting—there is nothing else that I can do. There is no wilderness
where I can hide from these things, there is no haven where I can
escape them; though I travel to the ends of the earth, I find the same
accursed system—I find that all the fair and noble impulses of
humanity, the dreams of poets and the agonies of martyrs, are shackled
and bound in the service of organized and predatory Greed! And
therefore I cannot rest, I cannot be silent; therefore I cast aside
comfort and happiness, health and good repute—and go out into the world
and cry out the pain of my spirit! Therefore I am not to be silenced by
poverty and sickness, not by hatred and obloquy, by threats and
ridicule—not by prison and persecution, if they should come—not by any
power that is upon the earth or above the earth, that was, or is, or
ever can be created. If I fail tonight, I can only try tomorrow;
knowing that the fault must be mine—that if once the vision of my soul
were spoken upon earth, if once the anguish of its defeat were uttered
in human speech, it would break the stoutest barriers of prejudice, it
would shake the most sluggish soul to action! It would abash the most
cynical, it would terrify the most selfish; and the voice of mockery
would be silenced, and fraud and falsehood would slink back into their
dens, and the truth would stand forth alone! For I speak with the voice
of the millions who are voiceless! Of them that are oppressed and have
no comforter! Of the disinherited of life, for whom there is no respite
and no deliverance, to whom the world is a prison, a dungeon of
torture, a tomb! With the voice of the little child who toils tonight
in a Southern cotton mill, staggering with exhaustion, numb with agony,
and knowing no hope but the grave! Of the mother who sews by
candlelight in her tenement garret, weary and weeping, smitten with the
mortal hunger of her babes! Of the man who lies upon a bed of rags,
wrestling in his last sickness and leaving his loved ones to perish! Of
the young girl who, somewhere at this moment, is walking the streets of
this horrible city, beaten and starving, and making her choice between
the brothel and the lake! With the voice of those, whoever and wherever
they may be, who are caught beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of
Greed! With the voice of humanity, calling for deliverance! Of the
everlasting soul of Man, arising from the dust; breaking its way out of
its prison—rending the bands of oppression and ignorance—groping its
way to the light!”
The speaker paused. There was an instant of silence, while men caught
their breaths, and then like a single sound there came a cry from a
thousand people. Through it all Jurgis sat still, motionless and rigid,
his eyes fixed upon the speaker; he was trembling, smitten with wonder.
Suddenly the man raised his hands, and silence fell, and he began
again.
“I plead with you,” he said, “whoever you may be, provided that you
care about the truth; but most of all I plead with working-man, with
those to whom the evils I portray are not mere matters of sentiment, to
be dallied and toyed with, and then perhaps put aside and forgotten—to
whom they are the grim and relentless realities of the daily grind, the
chains upon their limbs, the lash upon their backs, the iron in their
souls. To you, working-men! To you, the toilers, who have made this
land, and have no voice in its councils! To you, whose lot it is to sow
that others may reap, to labor and obey, and ask no more than the wages
of a beast of burden, the food and shelter to keep you alive from day
to day. It is to you that I come with my message of salvation, it is to
you that I appeal. I know how much it is to ask of you—I know, for I
have been in your place, I have lived your life, and there is no man
before me here tonight who knows it better. I have known what it is to
be a street-waif, a bootblack, living upon a crust of bread and
sleeping in cellar stairways and under empty wagons. I have known what
it is to dare and to aspire, to dream mighty dreams and to see them
perish—to see all the fair flowers of my spirit trampled into the mire
by the wild-beast powers of my life. I know what is the price that a
working-man pays for knowledge—I have paid for it with food and sleep,
with agony of body and mind, with health, almost with life itself; and
so, when I come to you with a story of hope and freedom, with the
vision of a new earth to be created, of a new labor to be dared, I am
not surprised that I find you sordid and material, sluggish and
incredulous. That I do not despair is because I know also the forces
that are driving behind you—because I know the raging lash of poverty,
the sting of contempt and mastership, ‘the insolence of office and the
spurns.’ Because I feel sure that in the crowd that has come to me
tonight, no matter how many may be dull and heedless, no matter how
many may have come out of idle curiosity, or in order to ridicule—there
will be some one man whom pain and suffering have made desperate, whom
some chance vision of wrong and horror has startled and shocked into
attention. And to him my words will come like a sudden flash of
lightning to one who travels in darkness—revealing the way before him,
the perils and the obstacles—solving all problems, making all
difficulties clear! The scales will fall from his eyes, the shackles
will be torn from his limbs—he will leap up with a cry of thankfulness,
he will stride forth a free man at last! A man delivered from his
self-created slavery! A man who will never more be trapped—whom no
blandishments will cajole, whom no threats will frighten; who from
tonight on will move forward, and not backward, who will study and
understand, who will gird on his sword and take his place in the army
of his comrades and brothers. Who will carry the good tidings to
others, as I have carried them to him—priceless gift of liberty and
light that is neither mine nor his, but is the heritage of the soul of
man! Working-men, working-men—comrades! open your eyes and look about
you! You have lived so long in the toil and heat that your senses are
dulled, your souls are numbed; but realize once in your lives this
world in which you dwell—tear off the rags of its customs and
conventions—behold it as it is, in all its hideous nakedness! Realize
it, _realize it!_ Realize that out upon the plains of Manchuria tonight
two hostile armies are facing each other—that now, while we are seated
here, a million human beings may be hurled at each other’s throats,
striving with the fury of maniacs to tear each other to pieces! And
this in the twentieth century, nineteen hundred years since the Prince
of Peace was born on earth! Nineteen hundred years that his words have
been preached as divine, and here two armies of men are rending and
tearing each other like the wild beasts of the forest! Philosophers
have reasoned, prophets have denounced, poets have wept and pleaded—and
still this hideous Monster roams at large! We have schools and
colleges, newspapers and books; we have searched the heavens and the
earth, we have weighed and probed and reasoned—and all to equip men to
destroy each other! We call it War, and pass it by—but do not put me
off with platitudes and conventions—come with me, come with me—_realize
it!_ See the bodies of men pierced by bullets, blown into pieces by
bursting shells! Hear the crunching of the bayonet, plunged into human
flesh; hear the groans and shrieks of agony, see the faces of men