Chapter 8

by Upton Sinclair

　　Yet even by this deadly winter the germ of hope was not to be kept fromsprouting in their hearts. It was just at this time that the greatadventure befell Marija.The victim was Tamoszius Kuszleika, who played the violin. Everybodylaughed at them, for Tamoszius was petite and frail, and Marija couldhave picked him up and carried him off under one arm. But perhaps thatwas why she fascinated him; the sheer volume of Marija's energy wasoverwhelming. That first night at the wedding Tamoszius had hardly takenhis eyes off her; and later on, when he came to find that she had reallythe heart of a baby, her voice and her violence ceased to terrify him,and he got the habit of coming to pay her visits on Sunday afternoons.There was no place to entertain company except in the kitchen, in themidst of the family, and Tamoszius would sit there with his hat betweenhis knees, never saying more than half a dozen words at a time, and turningred in the face before he managed to say those; until finally Jurgis wouldclap him upon the back, in his hearty way, crying, "Come now, brother,give us a tune." And then Tamoszius' face would light up and he wouldget out his fiddle, tuck it under his chin, and play. And forthwiththe soul of him would flame up and become eloquent--it was almost animpropriety, for all the while his gaze would be fixed upon Marija's face,until she would begin to turn red and lower her eyes. There was noresisting the music of Tamoszius, however; even the children would sitawed and wondering, and the tears would run down Teta Elzbieta's cheeks.A wonderful privilege it was to be thus admitted into the soul of a manof genius, to be allowed to share the ecstasies and the agonies of hisinmost life.Then there were other benefits accruing to Marija from this friendship--benefits of a more substantial nature. People paid Tamoszius big moneyto come and make music on state occasions; and also they would invitehim to parties and festivals, knowing well that he was too good-naturedto come without his fiddle, and that having brought it, he could be madeto play while others danced. Once he made bold to ask Marija to accompanyhim to such a party, and Marija accepted, to his great delight--after whichhe never went anywhere without her, while if the celebration were given byfriends of his, he would invite the rest of the family also. In any caseMarija would bring back a huge pocketful of cakes and sandwiches for thechildren, and stories of all the good things she herself had managed toconsume. She was compelled, at these parties, to spend most of her timeat the refreshment table, for she could not dance with anybody exceptother women and very old men; Tamoszius was of an excitable temperament,and afflicted with a frantic jealousy, and any unmarried man who venturedto put his arm about the ample waist of Marija would be certain to throwthe orchestra out of tune.It was a great help to a person who had to toil all the week to be ableto look forward to some such relaxation as this on Saturday nights.The family was too poor and too hardworked to make many acquaintances;in Packingtown, as a rule, people know only their near neighbors andshopmates, and so the place is like a myriad of little country villages.But now there was a member of the family who was permitted to travel andwiden her horizon; and so each week there would be new personalities totalk about,--how so-and-so was dressed, and where she worked, and whatshe got, and whom she was in love with; and how this man had jilted hisgirl, and how she had quarreled with the other girl, and what had passedbetween them; and how another man beat his wife, and spent all her earningsupon drink, and pawned her very clothes. Some people would have scornedthis talk as gossip; but then one has to talk about what one knows.It was one Saturday night, as they were coming home from a wedding,that Tamoszius found courage, and set down his violin case in the streetand spoke his heart; and then Marija clasped him in her arms. She toldthem all about it the next day, and fairly cried with happiness, for shesaid that Tamoszius was a lovely man. After that he no longer made loveto her with his fiddle, but they would sit for hours in the kitchen,blissfully happy in each other's arms; it was the tacit convention ofthe family to know nothing of what was going on in that corner.They were planning to be married in the spring, and have the garretof the house fixed up, and live there. Tamoszius made good wages;and little by little the family were paying back their debt to Marija,so she ought soon to have enough to start life upon--only, with herpreposterous softheartedness, she would insist upon spending a good partof her money every week for things which she saw they needed. Marija wasreally the capitalist of the party, for she had become an expert canpainter by this time--she was getting fourteen cents for every hundredand ten cans, and she could paint more than two cans every minute.Marija felt, so to speak, that she had her hand on the throttle, and theneighborhood was vocal with her rejoicings.Yet her friends would shake their heads and tell her to go slow; one couldnot count upon such good fortune forever--there were accidents that alwayshappened. But Marija was not to be prevailed upon, and went on planningand dreaming of all the treasures she was going to have for her home;and so, when the crash did come, her grief was painful to see. For her canning factory shut down! Marija would about as soon haveexpected to see the sun shut down--the huge establishment had been toher a thing akin to the planets and the seasons. But now it was shut!And they had not given her any explanation, they had not even given hera day's warning; they had simply posted a notice one Saturday that allhands would be paid off that afternoon, and would not resume work forat least a month! And that was all that there was to it--her job was gone!It was the holiday rush that was over, the girls said in answer toMarija's inquiries; after that there was always a slack. Sometimes thefactory would start up on half time after a while, but there was notelling--it had been known to stay closed until way into the summer.The prospects were bad at present, for truckmen who worked in thestorerooms said that these were piled up to the ceilings, so that thefirm could not have found room for another week's output of cans. And theyhad turned off three-quarters of these men, which was a still worse sign,since it meant that there were no orders to be filled. It was all aswindle, can-painting, said the girls--you were crazy with delight becauseyou were making twelve or fourteen dollars a week, and saving half of it;but you had to spend it all keeping alive while you were out, and so yourpay was really only half what you thought. Marija came home, and because she was a person who could not rest withoutdanger of explosion, they first had a great house cleaning, and then sheset out to search Packingtown for a job to fill up the gap. As nearly allthe canning establishments were shut down, and all the girls hunting work,it will be readily understood that Marija did not find any. Then she tookto trying the stores and saloons, and when this failed she even traveledover into the far-distant regions near the lake front, where lived therich people in great palaces, and begged there for some sort of work thatcould be done by a person who did not know English.The men upon the killing beds felt also the effects of the slump whichhad turned Marija out; but they felt it in a different way, and a waywhich made Jurgis understand at last all their bitterness. The big packersdid not turn their hands off and close down, like the canning factories;but they began to run for shorter and shorter hours. They had alwaysrequired the men to be on the killing beds and ready for work at seveno'clock, although there was almost never any work to be done till thebuyers out in the yards had gotten to work, and some cattle had come overthe chutes. That would often be ten or eleven o'clock, which was badenough, in all conscience; but now, in the slack season, they wouldperhaps not have a thing for their men to do till late in the afternoon.And so they would have to loaf around, in a place where the thermometermight be twenty degrees below zero! At first one would see them runningabout, or skylarking with each other, trying to keep warm; but before theday was over they would become quite chilled through and exhausted, and,when the cattle finally came, so near frozen that to move was an agony.And then suddenly the place would spring into activity, and the merciless"speeding-up" would begin!There were weeks at a time when Jurgis went home after such a day asthis with not more than two hours' work to his credit--which meant aboutthirty- five cents. There were many days when the total was less thanhalf an hour, and others when there was none at all. The general averagewas six hours a day, which meant for Jurgis about six dollars a week;and this six hours of work would be done after standing on the killing bedtill one o'clock, or perhaps even three or four o'clock, in the afternoon.Like as not there would come a rush of cattle at the very end of the day,which the men would have to dispose of before they went home, often workingby electric light till nine or ten, or even twelve or one o'clock, andwithout a single instant for a bite of supper. The men were at the mercyof the cattle. Perhaps the buyers would be holding off for better prices--if they could scare the shippers into thinking that they meant to buynothing that day, they could get their own terms. For some reason thecost of fodder for cattle in the yards was much above the market price--and you were not allowed to bring your own fodder! Then, too, a number ofcars were apt to arrive late in the day, now that the roads were blockedwith snow, and the packers would buy their cattle that night, to get themcheaper, and then would come into play their ironclad rule, that allcattle must be killed the same day they were bought. There was no usekicking about this--there had been one delegation after another to seethe packers about it, only to be told that it was the rule, and thatthere was not the slightest chance of its ever being altered. And soon Christmas Eve Jurgis worked till nearly one o'clock in the morning,and on Christmas Day he was on the killing bed at seven o'clock.All this was bad; and yet it was not the worst. For after all the hardwork a man did, he was paid for only part of it. Jurgis had once beenamong those who scoffed at the idea of these huge concerns cheating;and so now he could appreciate the bitter irony of the fact that itwas precisely their size which enabled them to do it with impunity.ne of the rules on the killing beds was that a man who was one minutelate was docked an hour; and this was economical, for he was made towork the balance of the hour--he was not allowed to stand round and wait.And on the other hand if he came ahead of time he got no pay for that--though often the bosses would start up the gang ten or fifteen minutesbefore the whistle. And this same custom they carried over to the end ofthe day; they did not pay for any fraction of an hour--for "broken time."A man might work full fifty minutes, but if there was no work to fill outthe hour, there was no pay for him. Thus the end of every day was a sortof lottery--a struggle, all but breaking into open war between the bossesand the men, the former trying to rush a job through and the lattertrying to stretch it out. Jurgis blamed the bosses for this, though thetruth to be told it was not always their fault; for the packers kept themfrightened for their lives--and when one was in danger of falling behindthe standard, what was easier than to catch up by making the gang workawhile "for the church"? This was a savage witticism the men had, whichJurgis had to have explained to him. Old man Jones was great on missionsand such things, and so whenever they were doing some particularlydisreputable job, the men would wink at each other and say, "Now we'reworking for the church!"One of the consequences of all these things was that Jurgis was nolonger perplexed when he heard men talk of fighting for their rights.He felt like fighting now himself; and when the Irish delegate of thebutcher-helpers' union came to him a second time, he received him ina far different spirit. A wonderful idea it now seemed to Jurgis,this of the men--that by combining they might be able to make a standand conquer the packers! Jurgis wondered who had first thought of it;and when he was told that it was a common thing for men to do in America,he got the first inkling of a meaning in the phrase "a free country."The delegate explained to him how it depended upon their being able toget every man to join and stand by the organization, and so Jurgissignified that he was willing to do his share. Before another monthwas by, all the working members of his family had union cards, and woretheir union buttons conspicuously and with pride. For fully a week theywere quite blissfully happy, thinking that belonging to a union meant anend to all their troubles.But only ten days after she had joined, Marija's canning factory closeddown, and that blow quite staggered them. They could not understand whythe union had not prevented it, and the very first time she attended ameeting Marija got up and made a speech about it. It was a businessmeeting, and was transacted in English, but that made no difference toMarija; she said what was in her, and all the pounding of the chairman'sgavel and all the uproar and confusion in the room could not prevail.Quite apart from her own troubles she was boiling over with a generalsense of the injustice of it, and she told what she thought of thepackers, and what she thought of a world where such things were allowedto happen; and then, while the echoes of the hall rang with the shock ofher terrible voice, she sat down again and fanned herself, and the meetinggathered itself together and proceeded to discuss the election of arecording secretary. Jurgis too had an adventure the first time he attended a union meeting,but it was not of his own seeking. Jurgis had gone with the desire toget into an inconspicuous corner and see what was done; but this attitudeof silent and open-eyed attention had marked him out for a victim.Tommy Finnegan was a little Irishman, with big staring eyes and a wildaspect, a "hoister" by trade, and badly cracked. Somewhere back in thefar-distant past Tommy Finnegan had had a strange experience, and theburden of it rested upon him. All the balance of his life he had donenothing but try to make it understood. When he talked he caught hisvictim by the buttonhole, and his face kept coming closer and closer--which was trying, because his teeth were so bad. Jurgis did not mind that,only he was frightened. The method of operation of the higher intelligenceswas Tom Finnegan's theme, and he desired to find out if Jurgis had everconsidered that the representation of things in their present similaritymight be altogether unintelligible upon a more elevated plane. There wereassuredly wonderful mysteries about the developing of these things; andthen, becoming confidential, Mr. Finnegan proceeded to tell of somediscoveries of his own. "If ye have iver had onything to do widshperrits," said he, and looked inquiringly at Jurgis, who kept shakinghis head. "Niver mind, niver mind," continued the other, "but theirinfluences may be operatin' upon ye; it's shure as I'm tellin' ye, it'sthem that has the reference to the immejit surroundin's that has the mostof power. It was vouchsafed to me in me youthful days to be acquaintedwith shperrits" and so Tommy Finnegan went on, expounding a system ofphilosophy, while the perspiration came out on Jurgis' forehead, so greatwas his agitation and embarrassment. In the end one of the men, seeinghis plight, came over and rescued him; but it was some time before he wasable to find any one to explain things to him, and meanwhile his fearlest the strange little Irishman should get him cornered again was enoughto keep him dodging about the room the whole evening.He never missed a meeting, however. He had picked up a few words ofEnglish by this time, and friends would help him to understand. Theywere often very turbulent meetings, with half a dozen men declaimingat once, in as many dialects of English; but the speakers were alldesperately in earnest, and Jurgis was in earnest too, for he understoodthat a fight was on, and that it was his fight. Since the time of hisdisillusionment, Jurgis had sworn to trust no man, except in his ownfamily; but here he discovered that he had brothers in affliction,and allies. Their one chance for life was in union, and so the strugglebecame a kind of crusade. Jurgis had always been a member of the church,because it was the right thing to be, but the church had never touchedhim, he left all that for the women. Here, however, was a new religion--one that did touch him, that took hold of every fiber of him; and with allthe zeal and fury of a convert he went out as a missionary. There weremany nonunion men among the Lithuanians, and with these he would laborand wrestle in prayer, trying to show them the right. Sometimes theywould be obstinate and refuse to see it, and Jurgis, alas, was not alwayspatient! He forgot how he himself had been blind, a short time ago--after the fashion of all crusaders since the original ones, who set outto spread the gospel of Brotherhood by force of arms.