Chapter 9

by Upton Sinclair

　　One of the first consequences of the discovery of the union was thatJurgis became desirous of learning English. He wanted to know whatwas going on at the meetings, and to be able to take part in them,and so he began to look about him, and to try to pick up words.The children, who were at school, and learning fast, would teach hima few; and a friend loaned him a little book that had some in it,and Ona would read them to him. Then Jurgis became sorry that hecould not read himself; and later on in the winter, when some onetold him that there was a night school that was free, he went andenrolled. After that, every evening that he got home from the yardsin time, he would go to the school; he would go even if he were intime for only half an hour. They were teaching him both to read andto speak English--and they would have taught him other things, if onlyhe had had a little time.Also the union made another great difference with him--it made himbegin to pay attention to the country. It was the beginning of democracywith him. It was a little state, the union, a miniature republic;its affairs were every man's affairs, and every man had a real sayabout them. In other words, in the union Jurgis learned to talk politics.In the place where he had come from there had not been any politics--in Russia one thought of the government as an affliction like thelightning and the hail. "Duck, little brother, duck," the wise oldpeasants would whisper; "everything passes away." And when Jurgis hadfirst come to America he had supposed that it was the same. He had heardpeople say that it was a free country--but what did that mean? He foundthat here, precisely as in Russia, there were rich men who owned everything;and if one could not find any work, was not the hunger he began to feelthe same sort of hunger?When Jurgis had been working about three weeks at Brown's, there had cometo him one noontime a man who was employed as a night watchman, and whoasked him if he would not like to take out naturalization papers andbecome a citizen. Jurgis did not know what that meant, but the manexplained the advantages. In the first place, it would not cost himanything, and it would get him half a day off, with his pay just thesame; and then when election time came he would be able to vote--andthere was something in that. Jurgis was naturally glad to accept, and sothe night watchman said a few words to the boss, and he was excused forthe rest of the day. When, later on, he wanted a holiday to get marriedhe could not get it; and as for a holiday with pay just the same--whatpower had wrought that miracle heaven only knew! However, he went withthe man, who picked up several other newly landed immigrants, Poles,Lithuanians, and Slovaks, and took them all outside, where stood a greatfour-horse tallyho coach, with fifteen or twenty men already in it.It was a fine chance to see the sights of the city, and the party had amerry time, with plenty of beer handed up from inside. So they drovedowntown and stopped before an imposing granite building, in which theyinterviewed an official, who had the papers all ready, with only the namesto be filled in. So each man in turn took an oath of which he did notunderstand a word, and then was presented with a handsome ornamenteddocument with a big red seal and the shield of the United States upon it,and was told that he had become a citizen of the Republic and the equalof the President himself.A month or two later Jurgis had another interview with this same man,who told him where to go to "register." And then finally, when electionday came, the packing houses posted a notice that men who desired to votemight remain away until nine that morning, and the same night watchmantook Jurgis and the rest of his flock into the back room of a saloon,and showed each of them where and how to mark a ballot, and then gaveeach two dollars, and took them to the polling place, where there wasa policeman on duty especially to see that they got through all right.Jurgis felt quite proud of this good luck till he got home and met Jonas,who had taken the leader aside and whispered to him, offering to votethree times for four dollars, which offer had been accepted.And now in the union Jurgis met men who explained all this mysteryto him; and he learned that America differed from Russia in that itsgovernment existed under the form of a democracy. The officials whoruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and sothere were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties,and the one got the office which bought the most votes. Now and then,the election was very close, and that was the time the poor man came in.In the stockyards this was only in national and state elections, for inlocal elections the Democratic Party always carried everything. The rulerof the district was therefore the Democratic boss, a little Irishmannamed Mike Scully. Scully held an important party office in the state,and bossed even the mayor of the city, it was said; it was his boastthat he carried the stockyards in his pocket. He was an enormously richman--he had a hand in all the big graft in the neighborhood. It wasScully, for instance, who owned that dump which Jurgis and Ona had seenthe first day of their arrival. Not only did he own the dump, but heowned the brick factory as well, and first he took out the clay and madeit into bricks, and then he had the city bring garbage to fill up thehole, so that he could build houses to sell to the people. Then, too,he sold the bricks to the city, at his own price, and the city came andgot them in its own wagons. And also he owned the other hole near by,where the stagnant water was; and it was he who cut the ice and sold it;and what was more, if the men told truth, he had not had to pay anytaxes for the water, and he had built the icehouse out of city lumber,and had not had to pay anything for that. The newspapers had got hold ofthat story, and there had been a scandal; but Scully had hired somebodyto confess and take all the blame, and then skip the country. It was said,too, that he had built his brick-kiln in the same way, and that the workmenwere on the city payroll while they did it; however, one had to pressclosely to get these things out of the men, for it was not their business,and Mike Scully was a good man to stand in with. A note signed by himwas equal to a job any time at the packing houses; and also he employeda good many men himself, and worked them only eight hours a day, and paidthem the highest wages. This gave him many friends--all of whom he hadgotten together into the "War Whoop League," whose clubhouse you mightsee just outside of the yards. It was the biggest clubhouse, and thebiggest club, in all Chicago; and they had prizefights every now and then,and cockfights and even dogfights. The policemen in the district allbelonged to the league, and instead of suppressing the fights, they soldtickets for them. The man that had taken Jurgis to be naturalized wasone of these "Indians," as they were called; and on election day therewould be hundreds of them out, and all with big wads of money in theirpockets and free drinks at every saloon in the district. That was anotherthing, the men said--all the saloon-keepers had to be "Indians," andto put up on demand, otherwise they could not do business on Sundays,nor have any gambling at all. In the same way Scully had all the jobsin the fire department at his disposal, and all the rest of the citygraft in the stockyards district; he was building a block of flatssomewhere up on Ashland Avenue, and the man who was overseeing it forhim was drawing pay as a city inspector of sewers. The city inspectorof water pipes had been dead and buried for over a year, but somebody wasstill drawing his pay. The city inspector of sidewalks was a barkeeperat the War Whoop Cafe--and maybe he could make it uncomfortable for anytradesman who did not stand in with Scully!Even the packers were in awe of him, so the men said. It gave thempleasure to believe this, for Scully stood as the people's man, andboasted of it boldly when election day came. The packers had wanteda bridge at Ashland Avenue, but they had not been able to get it tillthey had seen Scully; and it was the same with "Bubbly Creek," whichthe city had threatened to make the packers cover over, till Scullyhad come to their aid. "Bubbly Creek" is an arm of the Chicago River,and forms the southern boundary of the yards: all the drainage of thesquare mile of packing houses empties into it, so that it is really agreat open sewer a hundred or two feet wide. One long arm of it is blind,and the filth stays there forever and a day. The grease and chemicalsthat are poured into it undergo all sorts of strange transformations,which are the cause of its name; it is constantly in motion, as if hugefish were feeding in it, or great leviathans disporting themselves in itsdepths. Bubbles of carbonic acid gas will rise to the surface and burst,and make rings two or three feet wide. Here and there the grease andfilth have caked solid, and the creek looks like a bed of lava; chickenswalk about on it, feeding, and many times an unwary stranger has startedto stroll across, and vanished temporarily. The packers used to leavethe creek that way, till every now and then the surface would catch onfire and burn furiously, and the fire department would have to come andput it out. Once, however, an ingenious stranger came and started togather this filth in scows, to make lard out of; then the packers tookthe cue, and got out an injunction to stop him, and afterward gathered itthemselves. The banks of "Bubbly Creek" are plastered thick with hairs,and this also the packers gather and clean.And there were things even stranger than this, according to the gossip ofthe men. The packers had secret mains, through which they stole billionsof gallons of the city's water. The newspapers had been full of thisscandal--once there had even been an investigation, and an actualuncovering of the pipes; but nobody had been punished, and the thingwent right on. And then there was the condemned meat industry, with itsendless horrors. The people of Chicago saw the government inspectors inPackingtown, and they all took that to mean that they were protected fromdiseased meat; they did not understand that these hundred and sixty-threeinspectors had been appointed at the request of the packers, and thatthey were paid by the United States government to certify that all thediseased meat was kept in the state. They had no authority beyond that;for the inspection of meat to be sold in the city and state the wholeforce in Packingtown consisted of three henchmen of the local politicalmachine!*(*Rules and Regulations for the Inspection of Livestock and Their Products.United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Animal Industries,Order No. 125:-- Section 1. Proprietors of slaughterhouses, canning, salting, packing,or rendering establishments engaged in the slaughtering of cattle,sheep. or swine, or the packing of any of their products, the carcassesor products of which are to become subjects of interstate or foreigncommerce, shall make application to the Secretary of Agriculture forinspection of said animals and their products.... Section 15. Such rejected or condemned animals shall at once be removedby the owners from the pens containing animals which have been inspectedand found to be free from disease and fit for human food, and shall bedisposed of in accordance with the laws, ordinances, and regulations ofthe state and municipality in which said rejected or condemned animalsare located.... Section 25. A microscopic examination for trichinae shall be made ofall swine products exported to countries requiring such examination.No microscopic examination will be made of hogs slaughtered for interstatetrade, but this examination shall be confined to those intended for theexport trade.)And shortly afterward one of these, a physician, made the discovery thatthe carcasses of steers which had been condemned as tubercular by thegovernment inspectors, and which therefore contained ptomaines, which aredeadly poisons, were left upon an open platform and carted away to besold in the city; and so he insisted that these carcasses be treatedwith an injection of kerosene--and was ordered to resign the same week!So indignant were the packers that they went farther, and compelled themayor to abolish the whole bureau of inspection; so that since thenthere has not been even a pretense of any interference with the graft.There was said to be two thousand dollars a week hush money from thetubercular steers alone; and as much again from the hogs which haddied of cholera on the trains, and which you might see any day beingloaded into boxcars and hauled away to a place called Globe, in Indiana,where they made a fancy grade of lard. Jurgis heard of these things little by little, in the gossip of thosewho were obliged to perpetrate them. It seemed as if every time you meta person from a new department, you heard of new swindles and new crimes.There was, for instance, a Lithuanian who was a cattle butcher for theplant where Marija had worked, which killed meat for canning only; and tohear this man describe the animals which came to his place would have beenworthwhile for a Dante or a Zola. It seemed that they must have agenciesall over the country, to hunt out old and crippled and diseased cattleto be canned. There were cattle which had been fed on "whisky-malt,"the refuse of the breweries, and had become what the men called "steerly"--which means covered with boils. It was a nasty job killing these, for whenyou plunged your knife into them they would burst and splash foul-smellingstuff into your face; and when a man's sleeves were smeared with blood,and his hands steeped in it, how was he ever to wipe his face, or to clearhis eyes so that he could see? It was stuff such as this that made the"embalmed beef" that had killed several times as many United Statessoldiers as all the bullets of the Spaniards; only the army beef, besides,was not fresh canned, it was old stuff that had been lying for years inthe cellars. Then one Sunday evening, Jurgis sat puffing his pipe by the kitchen stove,and talking with an old fellow whom Jonas had introduced, and who workedin the canning rooms at Durham's; and so Jurgis learned a few things aboutthe great and only Durham canned goods, which had become a nationalinstitution. They were regular alchemists at Durham's; they advertised amushroom-catsup, and the men who made it did not know what a mushroomlooked like. They advertised "potted chicken,"--and it was like theboardinghouse soup of the comic papers, through which a chicken hadwalked with rubbers on. Perhaps they had a secret process for makingchickens chemically--who knows? said Jurgis' friend; the things that wentinto the mixture were tripe, and the fat of pork, and beef suet, and heartsof beef, and finally the waste ends of veal, when they had any. They putthese up in several grades, and sold them at several prices; but thecontents of the cans all came out of the same hopper. And then therewas "potted game" and "potted grouse," "potted ham," and "deviled ham"--de-vyled, as the men called it. "De-vyled" ham was made out of the wasteends of smoked beef that were too small to be sliced by the machines;and also tripe, dyed with chemicals so that it would not show white;and trimmings of hams and corned beef; and potatoes, skins and all;and finally the hard cartilaginous gullets of beef, after the tongueshad been cut out. All this ingenious mixture was ground up and flavoredwith spices to make it taste like something. Anybody who could invent anew imitation had been sure of a fortune from old Durham, said Jurgis'informant; but it was hard to think of anything new in a place whereso many sharp wits had been at work for so long; where men welcomedtuberculosis in the cattle they were feeding, because it made them fattenmore quickly; and where they bought up all the old rancid butter left overin the grocery stores of a continent, and "oxidized" it by a forced-airprocess, to take away the odor, rechurned it with skim milk, and sold itin bricks in the cities! Up to a year or two ago it had been the customto kill horses in the yards--ostensibly for fertilizer; but after longagitation the newspapers had been able to make the public realize thatthe horses were being canned. Now it was against the law to kill horsesin Packingtown, and the law was really complied with--for the present,at any rate. Any day, however, one might see sharp-horned and shaggy-haired creatures running with the sheep and yet what a job you would haveto get the public to believe that a good part of what it buys for lamband mutton is really goat's flesh!There was another interesting set of statistics that a person might havegathered in Packingtown--those of the various afflictions of the workers.When Jurgis had first inspected the packing plants with Szedvilas, he hadmarveled while he listened to the tale of all the things that were madeout of the carcasses of animals, and of all the lesser industries thatwere maintained there; now he found that each one of these lesserindustries was a separate little inferno, in its way as horrible as thekilling beds, the source and fountain of them all. The workers in eachof them had their own peculiar diseases. And the wandering visitor mightbe skeptical about all the swindles, but he could not be skeptical aboutthese, for the worker bore the evidence of them about on his own person--generally he had only to hold out his hand.There were the men in the pickle rooms, for instance, where old Antanashad gotten his death; scarce a one of these that had not some spot ofhorror on his person. Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushinga truck in the pickle rooms, and he might have a sore that would puthim out of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten bythe acid, one by one. Of the butchers and floorsmen, the beef-bonersand trimmers, and all those who used knives, you could scarcely find aperson who had the use of his thumb; time and time again the base of ithad been slashed, till it was a mere lump of flesh against which the manpressed the knife to hold it. The hands of these men would be criss-crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count them or totrace them. They would have no nails,--they had worn them off pullinghides; their knuckles were swollen so that their fingers spread out likea fan. There were men who worked in the cooking rooms, in the midst ofsteam and sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms the germsof tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply was renewedevery hour. There were the beef-luggers, who carried two-hundred-poundquarters into the refrigerator-cars; a fearful kind of work, that beganat four o'clock in the morning, and that wore out the most powerful menin a few years. There were those who worked in the chilling rooms, andwhose special disease was rheumatism; the time limit that a man couldwork in the chilling rooms was said to be five years. There were thewool-pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner than the hands ofthe pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted with acidto loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool withtheir bare hands, till the acid had eaten their fingers off. There werethose who made the tins for the canned meat; and their hands, too, werea maze of cuts, and each cut represented a chance for blood poisoning.Some worked at the stamping machines, and it was very seldom that onecould work long there at the pace that was set, and not give out andforget himself and have a part of his hand chopped off. There were the"hoisters," as they were called, whose task it was to press the leverwhich lifted the dead cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter,peering down through the damp and the steam; and as old Durham's architectshad not built the killing room for the convenience of the hoisters, at everyfew feet they would have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the onethey ran on; which got them into the habit of stooping, so that in a fewyears they would be walking like chimpanzees. Worst of any, however, werethe fertilizer men, and those who served in the cooking rooms. These peoplecould not be shown to the visitor,--for the odor of a fertilizer man wouldscare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards, and as for the other men,who worked in tank rooms full of steam, and in some of which there wereopen vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was thatthey fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was neverenough of them left to be worth exhibiting,--sometimes they would beoverlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to theworld as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!