Chapter 30

by Upton Sinclair

　　Jurgis had breakfast with Ostrinski and his family, and then hewent home to Elzbieta. He was no longer shy about it--when hewent in, instead of saying all the things he had been planning tosay, he started to tell Elzbieta about the revolution! At firstshe thought he was out of his mind, and it was hours before shecould really feel certain that he was himself. When, however,she had satisfied herself that he was sane upon all subjectsexcept politics, she troubled herself no further about it.Jurgis was destined to find that Elzbieta's armor was absolutelyimpervious to Socialism. Her soul had been baked hard in thefire of adversity, and there was no altering it now; life to herwas the hunt for daily bread, and ideas existed for her only asthey bore upon that. All that interested her in regard to thisnew frenzy which had seized hold of her son-in-law was whether ornot it had a tendency to make him sober and industrious; and whenshe found he intended to look for work and to contribute hisshare to the family fund, she gave him full rein to convince herof anything. A wonderfully wise little woman was Elzbieta;she could think as quickly as a hunted rabbit, and in half an hourshe had chosen her life-attitude to the Socialist movement. Sheagreed in everything with Jurgis, except the need of his payinghis dues; and she would even go to a meeting with him now andthen, and sit and plan her next day's dinner amid the storm.For a week after he became a convert Jurgis continued to wanderabout all day, looking for work; until at last he met with astrange fortune. He was passing one of Chicago's innumerablesmall hotels, and after some hesitation he concluded to go in.A man he took for the proprietor was standing in the lobby, and hewent up to him and tackled him for a job."What can you do?" the man asked."Anything, sir," said Jurgis, and added quickly: "I've been outof work for a long time, sir. I'm an honest man, and I'm strongand willing--"The other was eying him narrowly. "Do you drink?" he asked."No, sir," said Jurgis."Well, I've been employing a man as a porter, and he drinks.I've discharged him seven times now, and I've about made up mymind that's enough. Would you be a porter?""Yes, sir.""It's hard work. You'll have to clean floors and wash spittoonsand fill lamps and handle trunks--""I'm willing, sir.""All right. I'll pay you thirty a month and board, and you canbegin now, if you feel like it. You can put on the otherfellow's rig."And so Jurgis fell to work, and toiled like a Trojan till night.Then he went and told Elzbieta, and also, late as it was, he paida visit to Ostrinski to let him know of his good fortune. Herehe received a great surprise, for when he was describing thelocation of the hotel Ostrinski interrupted suddenly, "NotHinds's!""Yes," said Jurgis, "that's the name."To which the other replied, "Then you've got the best boss inChicago--he's a state organizer of our party, and one of ourbest-known speakers!"So the next morning Jurgis went to his employer and told him;and the man seized him by the hand and shook it. "By Jove!" hecried, "that lets me out. I didn't sleep all last night becauseI had discharged a good Socialist!"So, after that, Jurgis was known to his "boss" as "ComradeJurgis," and in return he was expected to call him "ComradeHinds." "Tommy" Hinds, as he was known to his intimates, was asquat little man, with broad shoulders and a florid face,decorated with gray side whiskers. He was the kindest-heartedman that ever lived, and the liveliest--inexhaustible in hisenthusiasm, and talking Socialism all day and all night. He wasa great fellow to jolly along a crowd, and would keep a meetingin an uproar; when once he got really waked up, the torrent ofhis eloquence could be compared with nothing save Niagara.Tommy Hinds had begun life as a blacksmith's helper, and had runaway to join the Union army, where he had made his firstacquaintance with "graft," in the shape of rotten muskets andshoddy blankets. To a musket that broke in a crisis he alwaysattributed the death of his only brother, and upon worthlessblankets he blamed all the agonies of his own old age. Wheneverit rained, the rheumatism would get into his joints, and then hewould screw up his face and mutter: "Capitalism, my boy,capitalism! 'Ecrasez l'infame!'" He had one unfailing remedyfor all the evils of this world, and he preached it to every one;no matter whether the person's trouble was failure in business,or dyspepsia, or a quarrelsome mother-in-law, a twinkle wouldcome into his eyes and he would say, "You know what to do aboutit--vote the Socialist ticket!"Tommy Hinds had set out upon the trail of the Octopus as soon asthe war was over. He had gone into business, and found himselfin competition with the fortunes of those who had been stealingwhile he had been fighting. The city government was in theirhands and the railroads were in league with them, and honestbusiness was driven to the wall; and so Hinds had put all hissavings into Chicago real estate, and set out singlehanded to damthe river of graft. He had been a reform member of the citycouncil, he had been a Greenbacker, a Labor Unionist, a Populist,a Bryanite--and after thirty years of fighting, the year 1896 hadserved to convince him that the power of concentrated wealthcould never be controlled, but could only be destroyed. He hadpublished a pamphlet about it, and set out to organize a party ofhis own, when a stray Socialist leaflet had revealed to him thatothers had been ahead of him. Now for eight years he had beenfighting for the party, anywhere, everywhere--whether it was aG.A.R. reunion, or a hotel-keepers' convention, or anAfro-American businessmen's banquet, or a Bible society picnic,Tommy Hinds would manage to get himself invited to explain therelations of Socialism to the subject in hand. After that hewould start off upon a tour of his own, ending at some placebetween New York and Oregon; and when he came back from there, hewould go out to organize new locals for the state committee; andfinally he would come home to rest--and talk Socialism inChicago. Hinds's hotel was a very hot-bed of the propaganda; allthe employees were party men, and if they were not when theycame, they were quite certain to be before they went away. Theproprietor would get into a discussion with some one in thelobby, and as the conversation grew animated, others would gatherabout to listen, until finally every one in the place would becrowded into a group, and a regular debate would be under way.This went on every night--when Tommy Hinds was not there to doit, his clerk did it; and when his clerk was away campaigning,the assistant attended to it, while Mrs. Hinds sat behind thedesk and did the work. The clerk was an old crony of theproprietor's, an awkward, rawboned giant of a man, with a lean,sallow face, a broad mouth, and whiskers under his chin, the verytype and body of a prairie farmer. He had been that all hislife--he had fought the railroads in Kansas for fifty years,a Granger, a Farmers' Alliance man, a "middle-of-the-road"Populist. Finally, Tommy Hinds had revealed to him the wonderfulidea of using the trusts instead of destroying them, and he hadsold his farm and come to Chicago.That was Amos Struver; and then there was Harry Adams, theassistant clerk, a pale, scholarly-looking man, who came fromMassachusetts, of Pilgrim stock. Adams had been a cottonoperative in Fall River, and the continued depression in theindustry had worn him and his family out, and he had emigrated toSouth Carolina. In Massachusetts the percentage of whiteilliteracy is eight-tenths of one per cent, while in SouthCarolina it is thirteen and six-tenths per cent; also in SouthCarolina there is a property qualification for voters--and forthese and other reasons child labor is the rule, and so thecotton mills were driving those of Massachusetts out of thebusiness. Adams did not know this, he only knew that theSouthern mills were running; but when he got there he found thatif he was to live, all his family would have to work, and fromsix o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning. So he hadset to work to organize the mill hands, after the fashion inMassachusetts, and had been discharged; but he had gotten otherwork, and stuck at it, and at last there had been a strike forshorter hours, and Harry Adams had attempted to address a streetmeeting, which was the end of him. In the states of the farSouth the labor of convicts is leased to contractors, and whenthere are not convicts enough they have to be supplied. HarryAdams was sent up by a judge who was a cousin of the mill ownerwith whose business he had interfered; and though the life hadnearly killed him, he had been wise enough not to murmur, and atthe end of his term he and his family had left the state of SouthCarolina--hell's back yard, as he called it. He had no money forcarfare, but it was harvesttime, and they walked one day andworked the next; and so Adams got at last to Chicago, and joinedthe Socialist party. He was a studious man, reserved, andnothing of an orator; but he always had a pile of books under hisdesk in the hotel, and articles from his pen were beginning toattract attention in the party press.Contrary to what one would have expected, all this radicalism didnot hurt the hotel business; the radicals flocked to it, and thecommercial travelers all found it diverting. Of late, also, thehotel had become a favorite stopping place for Western cattlemen.Now that the Beef Trust had adopted the trick of raising pricesto induce enormous shipments of cattle, and then dropping themagain and scooping in all they needed, a stock raiser was veryapt to find himself in Chicago without money enough to pay hisfreight bill; and so he had to go to a cheap hotel, and it was nodrawback to him if there was an agitator talking in the lobby.These Western fellows were just "meat" for Tommy Hinds--he wouldget a dozen of them around him and paint little pictures of "theSystem." Of course, it was not a week before he had heardJurgis's story, and after that he would not have let his newporter go for the world. "See here," he would say, in the middleof an argument, "I've got a fellow right here in my place who'sworked there and seen every bit of it!" And then Jurgis woulddrop his work, whatever it was, and come, and the other wouldsay, "Comrade Jurgis, just tell these gentlemen what you saw onthe killing-beds." At first this request caused poor Jurgis themost acute agony, and it was like pulling teeth to get him totalk; but gradually he found out what was wanted, and in the endhe learned to stand up and speak his piece with enthusiasm. Hisemployer would sit by and encourage him with exclamations andshakes of the head; when Jurgis would give the formula for"potted ham," or tell about the condemned hogs that were droppedinto the "destructors" at the top and immediately taken out againat the bottom, to be shipped into another state and made intolard, Tommy Hinds would bang his knee and cry, "Do you think aman could make up a thing like that out of his head?"And then the hotel-keeper would go on to show how the Socialistshad the only real remedy for such evils, how they alone "meantbusiness" with the Beef Trust. And when, in answer to this, thevictim would say that the whole country was getting stirred up,that the newspapers were full of denunciations of it, and thegovernment taking action against it, Tommy Hinds had a knock-outblow all ready. "Yes," he would say, "all that is true--but whatdo you suppose is the reason for it? Are you foolish enough tobelieve that it's done for the public? There are other trusts inthe country just as illegal and extortionate as the Beef Trust:there is the Coal Trust, that freezes the poor in winter--thereis the Steel Trust, that doubles the price of every nail in yourshoes--there is the Oil Trust, that keeps you from reading atnight--and why do you suppose it is that all the fury of thepress and the government is directed against the Beef Trust?" Andwhen to this the victim would reply that there was clamor enoughover the Oil Trust, the other would continue: "Ten years agoHenry D. Lloyd told all the truth about the Standard Oil Companyin his Wealth versus Commonwealth; and the book was allowed todie, and you hardly ever hear of it. And now, at last, twomagazines have the courage to tackle 'Standard Oil' again, andwhat happens? The newspapers ridicule the authors, the churchesdefend the criminals, and the government--does nothing. And now,why is it all so different with the Beef Trust?"Here the other would generally admit that he was "stuck"; andTommy Hinds would explain to him, and it was fun to see his eyesopen. "If you were a Socialist," the hotelkeeper would say, "youwould understand that the power which really governs the UnitedStates today is the Railroad Trust. It is the Railroad Trustthat runs your state government, wherever you live, and that runsthe United States Senate. And all of the trusts that I havenamed are railroad trusts--save only the Beef Trust! The BeefTrust has defied the railroads--it is plundering them day by daythrough the Private Car; and so the public is roused to fury, andthe papers clamor for action, and the government goes on the war-path! And you poor common people watch and applaud the job, andthink it's all done for you, and never dream that it is reallythe grand climax of the century-long battle of commercialcompetition--the final death grapple between the chiefs of theBeef Trust and 'Standard Oil,' for the prize of the mastery andownership of the United States of America!"Such was the new home in which Jurgis lived and worked, and inwhich his education was completed. Perhaps you would imaginethat he did not do much work there, but that would be a greatmistake. He would have cut off one hand for Tommy Hinds; and tokeep Hinds's hotel a thing of beauty was his joy in life. Thathe had a score of Socialist arguments chasing through his brainin the meantime did not interfere with this; on the contrary,Jurgis scrubbed the spittoons and polished the banisters all themore vehemently because at the same time he was wrestlinginwardly with an imaginary recalcitrant. It would be pleasant torecord that he swore off drinking immediately, and all the restof his bad habits with it; but that would hardly be exact. Theserevolutionists were not angels; they were men, and men who hadcome up from the social pit, and with the mire of it smeared overthem. Some of them drank, and some of them swore, and some ofthem ate pie with their knives; there was only one differencebetween them and all the rest of the populace--that they were menwith a hope, with a cause to fight for and suffer for. Therecame times to Jurgis when the vision seemed far-off and pale, anda glass of beer loomed large in comparison; but if the glass ledto another glass, and to too many glasses, he had something tospur him to remorse and resolution on the morrow. It was soevidently a wicked thing to spend one's pennies for drink, whenthe working class was wandering in darkness, and waiting to bedelivered; the price of a glass of beer would buy fifty copies ofa leaflet, and one could hand these out to the unregenerate,and then get drunk upon the thought of the good that was beingaccomplished. That was the way the movement had been made, andit was the only way it would progress; it availed nothing to knowof it, without fighting for it--it was a thing for all, not for afew! A corollary of this proposition of course was, that any onewho refused to receive the new gospel was personally responsiblefor keeping Jurgis from his heart's desire; and this, alas, madehim uncomfortable as an acquaintance. He met some neighbors withwhom Elzbieta had made friends in her neighborhood, and he setout to make Socialists of them by wholesale, and several times heall but got into a fight.It was all so painfully obvious to Jurgis! It was soincomprehensible how a man could fail to see it! Here were allthe opportunities of the country, the land, and the buildingsupon the land, the railroads, the mines, the factories, and thestores, all in the hands of a few private individuals, calledcapitalists, for whom the people were obliged to work for wages.The whole balance of what the people produced went to heap up thefortunes of these capitalists, to heap, and heap again, and yetagain--and that in spite of the fact that they, and every oneabout them, lived in unthinkable luxury! And was it not plainthat if the people cut off the share of those who merely "owned,"the share of those who worked would be much greater? That was asplain as two and two makes four; and it was the whole of it,absolutely the whole of it; and yet there were people who couldnot see it, who would argue about everything else in the world.They would tell you that governments could not manage things aseconomically as private individuals; they would repeat and repeatthat, and think they were saying something! They could not seethat "economical" management by masters meant simply that they,the people, were worked harder and ground closer and paid less!They were wage-earners and servants, at the mercy of exploiterswhose one thought was to get as much out of them as possible;and they were taking an interest in the process, were anxious lestit should not be done thoroughly enough! Was it not honestly atrial to listen to an argument such as that?And yet there were things even worse. You would begin talking tosome poor devil who had worked in one shop for the last thirtyyears, and had never been able to save a penny; who left homeevery morning at six o'clock, to go and tend a machine, and comeback at night too tired to take his clothes off; who had neverhad a week's vacation in his life, had never traveled, never hadan adventure, never learned anything, never hoped anything--andwhen you started to tell him about Socialism he would sniff andsay, "I'm not interested in that--I'm an individualist!" And thenhe would go on to tell you that Socialism was "paternalism," andthat if it ever had its way the world would stop progressing. Itwas enough to make a mule laugh, to hear arguments like that; andyet it was no laughing matter, as you found out--for how manymillions of such poor deluded wretches there were, whose liveshad been so stunted by capitalism that they no longer knew whatfreedom was! And they really thought that it was "individualism"for tens of thousands of them to herd together and obey theorders of a steel magnate, and produce hundreds of millions ofdollars of wealth for him, and then let him give them libraries;while for them to take the industry, and run it to suitthemselves, and build their own libraries--that would have been"Paternalism"!Sometimes the agony of such things as this was almost more thanJurgis could bear; yet there was no way of escape from it, therewas nothing to do but to dig away at the base of this mountain ofignorance and prejudice. You must keep at the poor fellow; youmust hold your temper, and argue with him, and watch for yourchance to stick an idea or two into his head. And the rest ofthe time you must sharpen up your weapons--you must think out newreplies to his objections, and provide yourself with new facts toprove to him the folly of his ways.So Jurgis acquired the reading habit. He would carry in hispocket a tract or a pamphlet which some one had loaned him, andwhenever he had an idle moment during the day he would plodthrough a paragraph, and then think about it while he worked.Also he read the newspapers, and asked questions about them. Oneof the other porters at Hinds's was a sharp little Irishman, whoknew everything that Jurgis wanted to know; and while they werebusy he would explain to him the geography of America, and itshistory, its constitution and its laws; also he gave him an ideaof the business system of the country, the great railroads andcorporations, and who owned them, and the labor unions, and thebig strikes, and the men who had led them. Then at night, whenhe could get off, Jurgis would attend the Socialist meetings.During the campaign one was not dependent upon the street corneraffairs, where the weather and the quality of the orator wereequally uncertain; there were hall meetings every night, and onecould hear speakers of national prominence. These discussed thepolitical situation from every point of view, and all thattroubled Jurgis was the impossibility of carrying off but a smallpart of the treasures they offered him.There was a man who was known in the party as the "Little Giant."The Lord had used up so much material in the making of his headthat there had not been enough to complete his legs; but he gotabout on the platform, and when he shook his raven whiskers thepillars of capitalism rocked. He had written a veritableencyclopedia upon the subject, a book that was nearly as big ashimself--And then there was a young author, who came fromCalifornia, and had been a salmon fisher, an oyster-pirate, alongshoreman, a sailor; who had tramped the country and been sentto jail, had lived in the Whitechapel slums, and been to theKlondike in search of gold. All these things he pictured in hisbooks, and because he was a man of genius he forced the world tohear him. Now he was famous, but wherever he went he stillpreached the gospel of the poor. And then there was one who wasknown at the "millionaire Socialist." He had made a fortune inbusiness, and spent nearly all of it in building up a magazine,which the post office department had tried to suppress, and haddriven to Canada. He was a quiet-mannered man, whom you wouldhave taken for anything in the world but a Socialist agitator.His speech was simple and informal--he could not understand whyany one should get excited about these things. It was a processof economic evolution, he said, and he exhibited its laws andmethods. Life was a struggle for existence, and the strongovercame the weak, and in turn were overcome by the strongest.Those who lost in the struggle were generally exterminated; butnow and then they had been known to save themselves bycombination--which was a new and higher kind of strength. It wasso that the gregarious animals had overcome the predaceous; itwas so, in human history, that the people had mastered the kings.The workers were simply the citizens of industry, and theSocialist movement was the expression of their will to survive.The inevitability of the revolution depended upon this fact, thatthey had no choice but to unite or be exterminated; this fact,grim and inexorable, depended upon no human will, it was the lawof the economic process, of which the editor showed the detailswith the most marvelous precision.And later on came the evening of the great meeting of thecampaign, when Jurgis heard the two standard-bearers of hisparty. Ten years before there had been in Chicago a strike of ahundred and fifty thousand railroad employees, and thugs had beenhired by the railroads to commit violence, and the President ofthe United States had sent in troops to break the strike, byflinging the officers of the union into jail without trial. Thepresident of the union came out of his cell a ruined man; butalso he came out a Socialist; and now for just ten years he hadbeen traveling up and down the country, standing face to facewith the people, and pleading with them for justice. He was aman of electric presence, tall and gaunt, with a face worn thinby struggle and suffering. The fury of outraged manhood gleamedin it--and the tears of suffering little children pleaded in hisvoice. When he spoke he paced the stage, lithe and eager, like apanther. He leaned over, reaching out for his audience; hepointed into their souls with an insistent finger. His voice washusky from much speaking, but the great auditorium was as stillas death, and every one heard him.And then, as Jurgis came out from this meeting, some one handedhim a paper which he carried home with him and read; and so hebecame acquainted with the "Appeal to Reason." About twelve yearspreviously a Colorado real-estate speculator had made up his mindthat it was wrong to gamble in the necessities of life of humanbeings: and so he had retired and begun the publication of aSocialist weekly. There had come a time when he had to set hisown type, but he had held on and won out, and now his publicationwas an institution. It used a carload of paper every week, andthe mail trains would be hours loading up at the depot of thelittle Kansas town. It was a four-page weekly, which sold forless than half a cent a copy; its regular subscription list was aquarter of a million, and it went to every crossroads post officein America.The "Appeal" was a "propaganda" paper. It had a manner all itsown--it was full of ginger and spice, of Western slang andhustle: It collected news of the doings of the "plutes," andserved it up for the benefit of the "American working-mule."It would have columns of the deadly parallel--the million dollars'worth of diamonds, or the fancy pet-poodle establishment of asociety dame, beside the fate of Mrs. Murphy of San Francisco,who had starved to death on the streets, or of John Robinson,just out of the hospital, who had hanged himself in New Yorkbecause he could not find work. It collected the stories ofgraft and misery from the daily press, and made a little pungentparagraphs out of them. "Three banks of Bungtown, South Dakota,failed, and more savings of the workers swallowed up!" "The mayorof Sandy Creek, Oklahoma, has skipped with a hundred thousanddollars. That's the kind of rulers the old partyites give you!""The president of the Florida Flying Machine Company is in jailfor bigamy. He was a prominent opponent of Socialism, which hesaid would break up the home!" The "Appeal" had what it calledits "Army," about thirty thousand of the faithful, who did thingsfor it; and it was always exhorting the "Army" to keep its danderup, and occasionally encouraging it with a prize competition,for anything from a gold watch to a private yacht or an eighty-acrefarm. Its office helpers were all known to the "Army" by quainttitles--"Inky Ike," "the Bald-headed Man," "the Redheaded Girl,""the Bulldog," "the Office Goat," and "the One Hoss."But sometimes, again, the "Appeal" would be desperately serious.It sent a correspondent to Colorado, and printed pages describingthe overthrow of American institutions in that state. In acertain city of the country it had over forty of its "Army" inthe headquarters of the Telegraph Trust, and no message ofimportance to Socialists ever went through that a copy of it didnot go to the "Appeal." It would print great broadsides duringthe campaign; one copy that came to Jurgis was a manifestoaddressed to striking workingmen, of which nearly a millioncopies had been distributed in the industrial centers, whereverthe employers' associations had been carrying out their "openshop" program. "You have lost the strike!" it was headed. "Andnow what are you going to do about it?" It was what is called an"incendiary" appeal--it was written by a man into whose soul theiron had entered. When this edition appeared, twenty thousandcopies were sent to the stockyards district; and they were takenout and stowed away in the rear of a little cigar store, andevery evening, and on Sundays, the members of the Packingtownlocals would get armfuls and distribute them on the streets andin the houses. The people of Packingtown had lost their strike,if ever a people had, and so they read these papers gladly, andtwenty thousand were hardly enough to go round. Jurgis hadresolved not to go near his old home again, but when he heard ofthis it was too much for him, and every night for a week he wouldget on the car and ride out to the stockyards, and help to undohis work of the previous year, when he had sent Mike Scully'sten-pin setter to the city Board of Aldermen.It was quite marvelous to see what a difference twelve months hadmade in Packingtown--the eyes of the people were getting opened!The Socialists were literally sweeping everything before themthat election, and Scully and the Cook County machine were attheir wits' end for an "issue." At the very close of the campaignthey bethought themselves of the fact that the strike had beenbroken by Negroes, and so they sent for a South Carolinafire-eater, the "pitchfork senator," as he was called, a man whotook off his coat when he talked to workingmen, and damned andswore like a Hessian. This meeting they advertised extensively,and the Socialists advertised it too--with the result that abouta thousand of them were on hand that evening. The "pitchforksenator" stood their fusillade of questions for about an hour,and then went home in disgust, and the balance of the meeting wasa strictly party affair. Jurgis, who had insisted upon coming,had the time of his life that night; he danced about and wavedhis arms in his excitement--and at the very climax he broke loosefrom his friends, and got out into the aisle, and proceeded tomake a speech himself! The senator had been denying that theDemocratic party was corrupt; it was always the Republicans whobought the votes, he said--and here was Jurgis shoutingfuriously, "It's a lie! It's a lie!" After which he went on totell them how he knew it--that he knew it because he had boughtthem himself! And he would have told the "pitchfork senator" allhis experiences, had not Harry Adams and a friend grabbed himabout the neck and shoved him into a seat.