Chapter II

by Theodore Dreiser

　　WHAT POVERTY THREATENED--OF GRANITE AND BRASSMinnie's flat, as the one-floor resident apartments were thenbeing called, was in a part of West Van Buren Street inhabited byfamilies of labourers and clerks, men who had come, and werestill coming, with the rush of population pouring in at the rateof 50,000 a year. It was on the third floor, the front windowslooking down into the street, where, at night, the lights ofgrocery stores were shining and children were playing. To Carrie,the sound of the little bells upon the horse-cars, as theytinkled in and out of hearing, was as pleasing as it was novel.She gazed into the lighted street when Minnie brought her intothe front room, and wondered at the sounds, the movement, themurmur of the vast city which stretched for miles and miles inevery direction.Mrs. Hanson, after the first greetings were over, gave Carrie thebaby and proceeded to get supper. Her husband asked a fewquestions and sat down to read the evening paper. He was asilent man, American born, of a Swede father, and now employed asa cleaner of refrigerator cars at the stock-yards. To him thepresence or absence of his wife's sister was a matter ofindifference. Her personal appearance did not affect him one wayor the other. His one observation to the point was concerningthe chances of work in Chicago."It's a big place," he said. "You can get in somewhere in a fewdays. Everybody does."It had been tacitly understood beforehand that she was to getwork and pay her board. He was of a clean, saving disposition,and had already paid a number of monthly instalments on two lotsfar out on the West Side. His ambition was some day to build ahouse on them.In the interval which marked the preparation of the meal Carriefound time to study the flat. She had some slight gift ofobservation and that sense, so rich in every woman--intuition.She felt the drag of a lean and narrow life. The walls of therooms were discordantly papered. The floors were covered withmatting and the hall laid with a thin rag carpet. One could seethat the furniture was of that poor, hurriedly patched togetherquality sold by the instalment houses.She sat with Minnie, in the kitchen, holding the baby until itbegan to cry. Then she walked and sang to it, until Hanson,disturbed in his reading, came and took it. A pleasant side tohis nature came out here. He was patient. One could see that hewas very much wrapped up in his offspring."Now, now," he said, walking. "There, there," and there was acertain Swedish accent noticeable in his voice."You'll want to see the city first, won't you?" said Minnie, whenthey were eating. "Well, we'll go out Sunday and see LincolnPark.Carrie noticed that Hanson had said nothing to this. He seemed tobe thinking of something else."Well," she said, "I think I'll look around tomorrow. I've gotFriday and Saturday, and it won't be any trouble. Which way isthe business part?"Minnie began to explain, but her husband took this part of theconversation to himself."It's that way," he said, pointing east. "That's east." Then hewent off into the longest speech he had yet indulged in,concerning the lay of Chicago. "You'd better look in those bigmanufacturing houses along Franklin Street and just the otherside of the river," he concluded. "Lots of girls work there.You could get home easy, too. It isn't very far."Carrie nodded and asked her sister about the neighbourhood. Thelatter talked in a subdued tone, telling the little she knewabout it, while Hanson concerned himself with the baby. Finallyhe jumped up and handed the child to his wife."I've got to get up early in the morning, so I'll go to bed," andoff he went, disappearing into the dark little bedroom off thehall, for the night."He works way down at the stock-yards," explained Minnie, "sohe's got to get up at half-past five.""What time do you get up to get breakfast?" asked Carrie."At about twenty minutes of five."Together they finished the labour of the day, Carrie washing thedishes while Minnie undressed the baby and put it to bed.Minnie's manner was one of trained industry, and Carrie could seethat it was a steady round of toil with her.She began to see that her relations with Drouet would have to beabandoned. He could not come here. She read from the manner ofHanson, in the subdued air of Minnie, and, indeed, the wholeatmosphere of the flat, a settled opposition to anything save aconservative round of toil. If Hanson sat every evening in thefront room and read his paper, if he went to bed at nine, andMinnie a little later, what would they expect of her? She sawthat she would first need to get work and establish herself on apaying basis before she could think of having company of anysort. Her little flirtation with Drouet seemed now anextraordinary thing."No," she said to herself, "he can't come here."She asked Minnie for ink and paper, which were upon the mantel inthe dining-room, and when the latter had gone to bed at ten, gotout Drouet's card and wrote him."I cannot have you call on me here. You will have to wait untilyou hear from me again. My sister's place is so small."She troubled herself over what else to put in the letter. Shewanted to make some reference to their relations upon the train,but was too timid. She concluded by thanking him for hiskindness in a crude way, then puzzled over the formality ofsigning her name, and finally decided upon the severe, winding upwith a "Very truly," which she subsequently changed to"Sincerely." She scaled and addressed the letter, and going inthe front room, the alcove of which contained her bed, drew theone small rocking-chair up to the open window, and sat lookingout upon the night and streets in silent wonder. Finally,wearied by her own reflections, she began to grow dull in herchair, and feeling the need of sleep, arranged her clothing forthe night and went to bed.When she awoke at eight the next morning, Hanson had gone. Hersister was busy in the dining-room, which was also the sitting-room, sewing. She worked, after dressing, to arrange a littlebreakfast for herself, and then advised with Minnie as to whichway to look. The latter had changed considerably since Carrie hadseen her. She was now a thin, though rugged, woman of twenty-seven, with ideas of life coloured by her husband's, and fasthardening into narrower conceptions of pleasure and duty than hadever been hers in a thoroughly circumscribed youth. She hadinvited Carrie, not because she longed for her presence, butbecause the latter was dissatisfied at home, and could probablyget work and pay her board here. She was pleased to see her in away but reflected her husband's point of view in the matter ofwork. Anything was good enough so long as it paid--say, fivedollars a week to begin with. A shop girl was the destinyprefigured for the newcomer. She would get in one of the greatshops and do well enough until--well, until something happened.Neither of them knew exactly what. They did not figure onpromotion. They did not exactly count on marriage. Things wouldgo on, though, in a dim kind of way until the better thing wouldeventuate, and Carrie would be rewarded for coming and toiling inthe city. It was under such auspicious circumstances that shestarted out this morning to look for work.Before following her in her round of seeking, let us look at thesphere in which her future was to lie. In 1889 Chicago had thepeculiar qualifications of growth which made such adventuresomepilgrimages even on the part of young girls plausible. Its manyand growing commercial opportunities gave it widespread fame,which made of it a giant magnet, drawing to itself, from allquarters, the hopeful and the hopeless--those who had theirfortune yet to make and those whose fortunes and affairs hadreached a disastrous climax elsewhere. It was a city of over500,000, with the ambition, the daring, the activity of ametropolis of a million. Its streets and houses were alreadyscattered over an area of seventy-five square miles. Itspopulation was not so much thriving upon established commerce asupon the industries which prepared for the arrival of others. Thesound of the hammer engaged upon the erection of new structureswas everywhere heard. Great industries were moving in. The hugerailroad corporations which had long before recognised theprospects of the place had seized upon vast tracts of land fortransfer and shipping purposes. Street-car lines had beenextended far out into the open country in anticipation of rapidgrowth. The city had laid miles and miles of streets and sewersthrough regions where, perhaps, one solitary house stood outalone--a pioneer of the populous ways to be. There were regionsopen to the sweeping winds and rain, which were yet lightedthroughout the night with long, blinking lines of gas-lamps,fluttering in the wind. Narrow board walks extended out, passinghere a house, and there a store, at far intervals, eventuallyending on the open prairie.In the central portion was the vast wholesale and shoppingdistrict, to which the uninformed seeker for work usuallydrifted. It was a characteristic of Chicago then, and one notgenerally shared by other cities, that individual firms of anypretension occupied individual buildings. The presence of ampleground made this possible. It gave an imposing appearance tomost of the wholesale houses, whose offices were upon the groundfloor and in plain view of the street. The large plates ofwindow glass, now so common, were then rapidly coming into use,and gave to the ground floor offices a distinguished andprosperous look. The casual wanderer could see as he passed apolished array of office fixtures, much frosted glass, clerkshard at work, and genteel businessmen in "nobby" suits and cleanlinen lounging about or sitting in groups. Polished brass ornickel signs at the square stone entrances announced the firm andthe nature of the business in rather neat and reserved terms.The entire metropolitan centre possessed a high and mighty aircalculated to overawe and abash the common applicant, and to makethe gulf between poverty and success seem both wide and deep.Into this important commercial region the timid Carrie went. Shewalked east along Van Buren Street through a region of lesseningimportance, until it deteriorated into a mass of shanties andcoal-yards, and finally verged upon the river. She walkedbravely forward, led by an honest desire to find employment anddelayed at every step by the interest of the unfolding scene, anda sense of helplessness amid so much evidence of power and forcewhich she did not understand. These vast buildings, what werethey? These strange energies and huge interests, for whatpurposes were they there? She could have understood the meaningof a little stone-cutter's yard at Columbia City, carving littlepieces of marble for individual use, but when the yards of somehuge stone corporation came into view, filled with spur tracksand flat cars, transpierced by docks from the river and traversedoverhead by immense trundling cranes of wood and steel, it lostall significance in her little world.It was so with the vast railroad yards, with the crowded array ofvessels she saw at the river, and the huge factories over theway, lining the water's edge. Through the open windows she couldsee the figures of men and women in working aprons, moving busilyabout. The great streets were wall-lined mysteries to her; thevast offices, strange mazes which concerned far-off individualsof importance. She could only think of people connected withthem as counting money, dressing magnificently, and riding incarriages. What they dealt in, how they laboured, to what end itall came, she had only the vaguest conception. It was allwonderful, all vast, all far removed, and she sank in spiritinwardly and fluttered feebly at the heart as she thought ofentering any one of these mighty concerns and asking forsomething to do--something that she could do--anything.