Chapter 12

by Upton Sinclair

　　For three weeks after his injury Jurgis never got up from bed. It wasa very obstinate sprain; the swelling would not go down, and the painstill continued. At the end of that time, however, he could containhimself no longer, and began trying to walk a little every day,laboring to persuade himself that he was better. No arguments couldstop him, and three or four days later he declared that he was goingback to work. He limped to the cars and got to Brown's, where hefound that the boss had kept his place--that is, was willing toturn out into the snow the poor devil he had hired in the meantime.Every now and then the pain would force Jurgis to stop work, but hestuck it out till nearly an hour before closing. Then he was forcedto acknowledge that he could not go on without fainting; it almostbroke his heart to do it, and he stood leaning against a pillar andweeping like a child. Two of the men had to help him to the car,and when he got out he had to sit down and wait in the snow till someone came along.So they put him to bed again, and sent for the doctor, as they oughtto have done in the beginning. It transpired that he had twisted atendon out of place, and could never have gotten well without attention.Then he gripped the sides of the bed, and shut his teeth together,and turned white with agony, while the doctor pulled and wrenchedaway at his swollen ankle. When finally the doctor left, he toldhim that he would have to lie quiet for two months, and that if hewent to work before that time he might lame himself for life.Three days later there came another heavy snowstorm, and Jonas andMarija and Ona and little Stanislovas all set out together, an hourbefore daybreak, to try to get to the yards. About noon the last twocame back, the boy screaming with pain. His fingers were all frosted,it seemed. They had had to give up trying to get to the yards,and had nearly perished in a drift. All that they knew how to dowas to hold the frozen fingers near the fire, and so little Stanislovasspent most of the day dancing about in horrible agony, till Jurgisflew into a passion of nervous rage and swore like a madman, declaringthat he would kill him if he did not stop. All that day and nightthe family was half-crazed with fear that Ona and the boy had losttheir places; and in the morning they set out earlier than ever,after the little fellow had been beaten with a stick by Jurgis.There could be no trifling in a case like this, it was a matter oflife and death; little Stanislovas could not be expected to realizethat he might a great deal better freeze in the snowdrift than losehis job at the lard machine. Ona was quite certain that she would findher place gone, and was all unnerved when she finally got to Brown's,and found that the forelady herself had failed to come, and was thereforecompelled to be lenient. One of the consequences of this episode was that the first joints ofthree of the little boy's fingers were permanently disabled, and anotherthat thereafter he always had to be beaten before he set out to work,whenever there was fresh snow on the ground. Jurgis was called uponto do the beating, and as it hurt his foot he did it with a vengeance;but it did not tend to add to the sweetness of his temper. They say thatthe best dog will turn cross if he be kept chained all the time, and itwas the same with the man; he had not a thing to do all day but lie andcurse his fate, and the time came when he wanted to curse everything.This was never for very long, however, for when Ona began to cry,Jurgis could not stay angry. The poor fellow looked like a homelessghost, with his cheeks sunken in and his long black hair stragglinginto his eyes; he was too discouraged to cut it, or to think abouthis appearance. His muscles were wasting away, and what were leftwere soft and flabby. He had no appetite, and they could not affordto tempt him with delicacies. It was better, he said, that he shouldnot eat, it was a saving. About the end of March he had got hold ofOna's bankbook, and learned that there was only three dollars leftto them in the world.But perhaps the worst of the consequences of this long siege was thatthey lost another member of their family; Brother Jonas disappeared.One Saturday night he did not come home, and thereafter all theirefforts to get trace of him were futile. It was said by the bossat Durham's that he had gotten his week's money and left there.That might not be true, of course, for sometimes they would say thatwhen a man had been killed; it was the easiest way out of it forall concerned. When, for instance, a man had fallen into one ofthe rendering tanks and had been made into pure leaf lard and peerlessfertilizer, there was no use letting the fact out and making hisfamily unhappy. More probable, however, was the theory that Jonashad deserted them, and gone on the road, seeking happiness. He hadbeen discontented for a long time, and not without some cause.He paid good board, and was yet obliged to live in a family wherenobody had enough to eat. And Marija would keep giving them allher money, and of course he could not but feel that he was calledupon to do the same. Then there were crying brats, and all sortsof misery; a man would have had to be a good deal of a hero to standit all without grumbling, and Jonas was not in the least a hero--he wassimply a weatherbeaten old fellow who liked to have a good supper andsit in the corner by the fire and smoke his pipe in peace before hewent to bed. Here there was not room by the fire, and through thewinter the kitchen had seldom been warm enough for comfort. So, withthe springtime, what was more likely than that the wild idea ofescaping had come to him? Two years he had been yoked like a horseto a half-ton truck in Durham's dark cellars, with never a rest,save on Sundays and four holidays in the year, and with never a wordof thanks--only kicks and blows and curses, such as no decent dogwould have stood. And now the winter was over, and the spring windswere blowing--and with a day's walk a man might put the smoke ofPackingtown behind him forever, and be where the grass was green andthe flowers all the colors of the rainbow!But now the income of the family was cut down more than one-third,and the food demand was cut only one-eleventh, so that they wereworse off than ever. Also they were borrowing money from Marija,and eating up her bank account, and spoiling once again her hopesof marriage and happiness. And they were even going into debt toTamoszius Kuszleika and letting him impoverish himself. Poor Tamosziuswas a man without any relatives, and with a wonderful talent besides,and he ought to have made money and prospered; but he had fallenin love, and so given hostages to fortune, and was doomed to bedragged down too.So it was finally decided that two more of the children would haveto leave school. Next to Stanislovas, who was now fifteen, there wasa girl, little Kotrina, who was two years younger, and then two boys,Vilimas, who was eleven, and Nikalojus, who was ten. Both of theselast were bright boys, and there was no reason why their familyshould starve when tens of thousands of children no older wereearning their own livings. So one morning they were given a quarterapiece and a roll with a sausage in it, and, with their minds top-heavywith good advice, were sent out to make their way to the city andlearn to sell newspapers. They came back late at night in tears,having walked for the five or six miles to report that a man hadoffered to take them to a place where they sold newspapers, and hadtaken their money and gone into a store to get them, and nevermorebeen seen. So they both received a whipping, and the next momingset out again. This time they found the newspaper place, and procuredtheir stock; and after wandering about till nearly noontime, saying"Paper?" to every one they saw, they had all their stock taken awayand received a thrashing besides from a big newsman upon whoseterritory they had trespassed. Fortunately, however, they hadalready sold some papers, and came back with nearly as much as theystarted with.After a week of mishaps such as these, the two little fellows beganto learn the ways of the trade--the names of the different papers,and how many of each to get, and what sort of people to offer them to,and where to go and where to stay away from. After this, leaving homeat four o'clock in the morning, and running about the streets, firstwith morning papers and then with evening, they might come home lateat night with twenty or thirty cents apiece--possibly as much asforty cents. From this they had to deduct their carfare, since thedistance was so great; but after a while they made friends, and learnedstill more, and then they would save their carfare. They would geton a car when the conductor was not looking, and hide in the crowd;and three times out of four he would not ask for their fares, eithernot seeing them, or thinking they had already paid; or if he did ask,they would hunt through their pockets, and then begin to cry, and eitherhave their fares paid by some kind old lady, or else try the trickagain on a new car. All this was fair play, they felt. Whose faultwas it that at the hours when workingmen were going to their workand back, the cars were so crowded that the conductors could notcollect all the fares? And besides, the companies were thieves,people said--had stolen all their franchises with the help ofscoundrelly politicians!Now that the winter was by, and there was no more danger of snow,and no more coal to buy, and another room warm enough to put thechildren into when they cried, and enough money to get along fromweek to week with, Jurgis was less terrible than he had been.A man can get used to anything in the course of time, and Jurgishad gotten used to lying about the house. Ona saw this, and wasvery careful not to destroy his peace of mind, by letting him knowhow very much pain she was suffering. It was now the time of thespring rains, and Ona had often to ride to her work, in spite ofthe expense; she was getting paler every day, and sometimes, in spiteof her good resolutions, it pained her that Jurgis did not notice it.She wondered if he cared for her as much as ever, if all this miserywas not wearing out his love. She had to be away from him all the time,and bear her own troubles while he was bearing his; and then, when shecame home, she was so worn out; and whenever they talked they hadonly their worries to talk of--truly it was hard, in such a life,to keep any sentiment alive. The woe of this would flame up in Onasometimes--at night she would suddenly clasp her big husband in herarms and break into passionate weeping, demanding to know if he reallyloved her. Poor Jurgis, who had in truth grown more matter-of-fact,under the endless pressure of penury, would not know what to make ofthese things, and could only try to recollect when he had last beencross; and so Ona would have to forgive him and sob herself to sleep.The latter part of April Jurgis went to see the doctor, and was givena bandage to lace about his ankle, and told that he might go backto work. It needed more than the permission of the doctor, however,for when he showed up on the killing floor of Brown's, he was toldby the foreman that it had not been possible to keep his job for him.Jurgis knew that this meant simply that the foreman had found some oneelse to do the work as well and did not want to bother to make a change.He stood in the doorway, looking mournfully on, seeing his friendsand companions at work, and feeling like an outcast. Then he wentout and took his place with the mob of the unemployed.This time, however, Jurgis did not have the same fine confidence,nor the same reason for it. He was no longer the finest-lookingman in the throng, and the bosses no longer made for him; he wasthin and haggard, and his clothes were seedy, and he looked miserable.And there were hundreds who looked and felt just like him, and whohad been wandering about Packingtown for months begging for work.This was a critical time in Jurgis' life, and if he had been a weakerman he would have gone the way the rest did. Those out-of-workwretches would stand about the packing houses every morning till thepolice drove them away, and then they would scatter among the saloons.Very few of them had the nerve to face the rebuffs that they wouldencounter by trying to get into the buildings to interview the bosses;if they did not get a chance in the morning, there would be nothingto do but hang about the saloons the rest of the day and night.Jurgis was saved from all this--partly, to be sure, because it waspleasant weather, and there was no need to be indoors; but mainlybecause he carried with him always the pitiful little face of his wife.He must get work, he told himself, fighting the battle with despairevery hour of the day. He must get work! He must have a place againand some money saved up, before the next winter came.But there was no work for him. He sought out all the members of hisunion--Jurgis had stuck to the union through all this--and begged themto speak a word for him. He went to every one he knew, asking fora chance, there or anywhere. He wandered all day through the buildings;and in a week or two, when he had been all over the yards, and intoevery room to which he had access, and learned that there was nota job anywhere, he persuaded himself that there might have beena change in the places he had first visited, and began the roundall over; till finally the watchmen and the "spotters" of thecompanies came to know him by sight and to order him out with threats.Then there was nothing more for him to do but go with the crowd inthe morning, and keep in the front row and look eager, and when hefailed, go back home, and play with little Kotrina and the baby.The peculiar bitterness of all this was that Jurgis saw so plainlythe meaning of it. In the beginning he had been fresh and strong,and he had gotten a job the first day; but now he was second-hand,a damaged article, so to speak, and they did not want him. They hadgot the best of him--they had worn him out, with their speeding-upand their carelessness, and now they had thrown him away! And Jurgiswould make the acquaintance of others of these unemployed men and findthat they had all had the same experience. There were some, of course,who had wandered in from other places, who had been ground up in othermills; there were others who were out from their own fault--some,for instance, who had not been able to stand the awful grind withoutdrink. The vast majority, however, were simply the worn-out partsof the great merciless packing machine; they had toiled there, and keptup with the pace, some of them for ten or twenty years, until finallythe time had come when they could not keep up with it any more.Some had been frankly told that they were too old, that a sprier manwas needed; others had given occasion, by some act of carelessnessor incompetence; with most, however, the occasion had been the sameas with Jurgis. They had been overworked and underfed so long,and finally some disease had laid them on their backs; or they had cutthemselves, and had blood poisoning, or met with some other accident.When a man came back after that, he would get his place back only bythe courtesy of the boss. To this there was no exception, save whenthe accident was one for which the firm was liable; in that case theywould send a slippery lawyer to see him, first to try to get him tosign away his claims, but if he was too smart for that, to promisehim that he and his should always be provided with work. This promisethey would keep, strictly and to the letter--for two years. Two yearswas the "statute of limitations," and after that the victim could not sue. What happened to a man after any of these things, all depended uponthe circumstances. If he were of the highly skilled workers, he wouldprobably have enough saved up to tide him over. The best paid men,the "splitters," made fifty cents an hour, which would be five orsix dollars a day in the rush seasons, and one or two in the dullest.A man could live and save on that; but then there were only halfa dozen splitters in each place, and one of them that Jurgis knewhad a family of twenty-two children, all hoping to grow up to besplitters like their father. For an unskilled man, who made tendollars a week in the rush seasons and five in the dull, it alldepended upon his age and the number he had dependent upon him.An unmarried man could save, if he did not drink, and if he wasabsolutely selfish--that is, if he paid no heed to the demands ofhis old parents, or of his little brothers and sisters, or of anyother relatives he might have, as well as of the members of his union,and his chums, and the people who might be starving to death next door.