The Jungle
isinglass, and phosphorus, bone black, shoe blacking, and bone oil.
They had curled-hair works for the cattle tails, and a “wool pullery”
for the sheepskins; they made pepsin from the stomachs of the pigs, and
albumen from the blood, and violin strings from the ill-smelling
entrails. When there was nothing else to be done with a thing, they
first put it into a tank and got out of it all the tallow and grease,
and then they made it into fertilizer. All these industries were
gathered into buildings near by, connected by galleries and railroads
with the main establishment; and it was estimated that they had handled
nearly a quarter of a billion of animals since the founding of the
plant by the elder Durham a generation and more ago. If you counted
with it the other big plants—and they were now really all one—it was,
so Jokubas informed them, the greatest aggregation of labor and capital
ever gathered in one place. It employed thirty thousand men; it
supported directly two hundred and fifty thousand people in its
neighborhood, and indirectly it supported half a million. It sent its
products to every country in the civilized world, and it furnished the
food for no less than thirty million people!
To all of these things our friends would listen open-mouthed—it seemed
to them impossible of belief that anything so stupendous could have
been devised by mortal man. That was why to Jurgis it seemed almost
profanity to speak about the place as did Jokubas, skeptically; it was
a thing as tremendous as the universe—the laws and ways of its working
no more than the universe to be questioned or understood. All that a
mere man could do, it seemed to Jurgis, was to take a thing like this
as he found it, and do as he was told; to be given a place in it and a
share in its wonderful activities was a blessing to be grateful for, as
one was grateful for the sunshine and the rain. Jurgis was even glad
that he had not seen the place before meeting with his triumph, for he
felt that the size of it would have overwhelmed him. But now he had
been admitted—he was a part of it all! He had the feeling that this
whole huge establishment had taken him under its protection, and had
become responsible for his welfare. So guileless was he, and ignorant
of the nature of business, that he did not even realize that he had
become an employee of Brown’s, and that Brown and Durham were supposed
by all the world to be deadly rivals—were even required to be deadly
rivals by the law of the land, and ordered to try to ruin each other
under penalty of fine and imprisonment!
CHAPTER IV
Promptly at seven the next morning Jurgis reported for work. He came to
the door that had been pointed out to him, and there he waited for
nearly two hours. The boss had meant for him to enter, but had not said
this, and so it was only when on his way out to hire another man that
he came upon Jurgis. He gave him a good cursing, but as Jurgis did not
understand a word of it he did not object. He followed the boss, who
showed him where to put his street clothes, and waited while he donned
the working clothes he had bought in a secondhand shop and brought with
him in a bundle; then he led him to the “killing beds.” The work which
Jurgis was to do here was very simple, and it took him but a few
minutes to learn it. He was provided with a stiff besom, such as is
used by street sweepers, and it was his place to follow down the line
the man who drew out the smoking entrails from the carcass of the
steer; this mass was to be swept into a trap, which was then closed, so
that no one might slip into it. As Jurgis came in, the first cattle of
the morning were just making their appearance; and so, with scarcely
time to look about him, and none to speak to any one, he fell to work.
It was a sweltering day in July, and the place ran with steaming hot
blood—one waded in it on the floor. The stench was almost overpowering,
but to Jurgis it was nothing. His whole soul was dancing with joy—he
was at work at last! He was at work and earning money! All day long he
was figuring to himself. He was paid the fabulous sum of seventeen and
a half cents an hour; and as it proved a rush day and he worked until
nearly seven o’clock in the evening, he went home to the family with
the tidings that he had earned more than a dollar and a half in a
single day!
At home, also, there was more good news; so much of it at once that
there was quite a celebration in Aniele’s hall bedroom. Jonas had been
to have an interview with the special policeman to whom Szedvilas had
introduced him, and had been taken to see several of the bosses, with
the result that one had promised him a job the beginning of the next
week. And then there was Marija Berczynskas, who, fired with jealousy
by the success of Jurgis, had set out upon her own responsibility to
get a place. Marija had nothing to take with her save her two brawny
arms and the word “job,” laboriously learned; but with these she had
marched about Packingtown all day, entering every door where there were
signs of activity. Out of some she had been ordered with curses; but
Marija was not afraid of man or devil, and asked every one she
saw—visitors and strangers, or work-people like herself, and once or
twice even high and lofty office personages, who stared at her as if
they thought she was crazy. In the end, however, she had reaped her
reward. In one of the smaller plants she had stumbled upon a room where
scores of women and girls were sitting at long tables preparing smoked
beef in cans; and wandering through room after room, Marija came at
last to the place where the sealed cans were being painted and labeled,
and here she had the good fortune to encounter the “forelady.” Marija
did not understand then, as she was destined to understand later, what
there was attractive to a “forelady” about the combination of a face
full of boundless good nature and the muscles of a dray horse; but the
woman had told her to come the next day and she would perhaps give her
a chance to learn the trade of painting cans. The painting of cans
being skilled piecework, and paying as much as two dollars a day,
Marija burst in upon the family with the yell of a Comanche Indian, and
fell to capering about the room so as to frighten the baby almost into
convulsions.
Better luck than all this could hardly have been hoped for; there was
only one of them left to seek a place. Jurgis was determined that Teta
Elzbieta should stay at home to keep house, and that Ona should help
her. He would not have Ona working—he was not that sort of a man, he
said, and she was not that sort of a woman. It would be a strange thing
if a man like him could not support the family, with the help of the
board of Jonas and Marija. He would not even hear of letting the
children go to work—there were schools here in America for children,
Jurgis had heard, to which they could go for nothing. That the priest
would object to these schools was something of which he had as yet no
idea, and for the present his mind was made up that the children of
Teta Elzbieta should have as fair a chance as any other children. The
oldest of them, little Stanislovas, was but thirteen, and small for his
age at that; and while the oldest son of Szedvilas was only twelve, and
had worked for over a year at Jones’s, Jurgis would have it that
Stanislovas should learn to speak English, and grow up to be a skilled
man.
So there was only old Dede Antanas; Jurgis would have had him rest too,
but he was forced to acknowledge that this was not possible, and,
besides, the old man would not hear it spoken of—it was his whim to
insist that he was as lively as any boy. He had come to America as full
of hope as the best of them; and now he was the chief problem that
worried his son. For every one that Jurgis spoke to assured him that it
was a waste of time to seek employment for the old man in Packingtown.
Szedvilas told him that the packers did not even keep the men who had
grown old in their own service—to say nothing of taking on new ones.
And not only was it the rule here, it was the rule everywhere in
America, so far as he knew. To satisfy Jurgis he had asked the
policeman, and brought back the message that the thing was not to be
thought of. They had not told this to old Anthony, who had consequently
spent the two days wandering about from one part of the yards to
another, and had now come home to hear about the triumph of the others,
smiling bravely and saying that it would be his turn another day.
Their good luck, they felt, had given them the right to think about a
home; and sitting out on the doorstep that summer evening, they held
consultation about it, and Jurgis took occasion to broach a weighty
subject. Passing down the avenue to work that morning he had seen two
boys leaving an advertisement from house to house; and seeing that
there were pictures upon it, Jurgis had asked for one, and had rolled
it up and tucked it into his shirt. At noontime a man with whom he had
been talking had read it to him and told him a little about it, with
the result that Jurgis had conceived a wild idea.
He brought out the placard, which was quite a work of art. It was
nearly two feet long, printed on calendered paper, with a selection of
colors so bright that they shone even in the moonlight. The center of
the placard was occupied by a house, brilliantly painted, new, and
dazzling. The roof of it was of a purple hue, and trimmed with gold;
the house itself was silvery, and the doors and windows red. It was a
two-story building, with a porch in front, and a very fancy scrollwork
around the edges; it was complete in every tiniest detail, even the
doorknob, and there was a hammock on the porch and white lace curtains
in the windows. Underneath this, in one corner, was a picture of a
husband and wife in loving embrace; in the opposite corner was a
cradle, with fluffy curtains drawn over it, and a smiling cherub
hovering upon silver-colored wings. For fear that the significance of
all this should be lost, there was a label, in Polish, Lithuanian, and
German—“_Dom. Namai. Heim._” “Why pay rent?” the linguistic circular
went on to demand. “Why not own your own home? Do you know that you can
buy one for less than your rent? We have built thousands of homes which
are now occupied by happy families.”—So it became eloquent, picturing
the blissfulness of married life in a house with nothing to pay. It
even quoted “Home, Sweet Home,” and made bold to translate it into
Polish—though for some reason it omitted the Lithuanian of this.
Perhaps the translator found it a difficult matter to be sentimental in
a language in which a sob is known as a gukcziojimas and a smile as a
nusiszypsojimas.
Over this document the family pored long, while Ona spelled out its
contents. It appeared that this house contained four rooms, besides a
basement, and that it might be bought for fifteen hundred dollars, the
lot and all. Of this, only three hundred dollars had to be paid down,
the balance being paid at the rate of twelve dollars a month. These
were frightful sums, but then they were in America, where people talked
about such without fear. They had learned that they would have to pay a
rent of nine dollars a month for a flat, and there was no way of doing
better, unless the family of twelve was to exist in one or two rooms,
as at present. If they paid rent, of course, they might pay forever,
and be no better off; whereas, if they could only meet the extra
expense in the beginning, there would at last come a time when they
would not have any rent to pay for the rest of their lives.
They figured it up. There was a little left of the money belonging to
Teta Elzbieta, and there was a little left to Jurgis. Marija had about