Jurgis took the news in a peculiar way. He turned deadly pale, but he
caught himself, and for half a minute stood in the middle of the room,
clenching his hands tightly and setting his teeth. Then he pushed Aniele
aside and strode into the next room and climbed the ladder.

In the corner was a blanket, with a form half showing beneath it; and
beside it lay Elzbieta, whether crying or in a faint, Jurgis could not
tell. Marija was pacing the room, screaming and wringing her hands. He
clenched his hands tighter yet, and his voice was hard as he spoke.

"How did it happen?" he asked.

Marija scarcely heard him in her agony. He repeated the question,
louder and yet more harshly. "He fell off the sidewalk!" she wailed.
The sidewalk in front of the house was a platform made of half-rotten
boards, about five feet above the level of the sunken street.

"How did he come to be there?" he demanded.

"He went--he went out to play," Marija sobbed, her voice choking her.
"We couldn't make him stay in. He must have got caught in the mud!"

"Are you sure that he is dead?" he demanded.

"Ai! ai!" she wailed. "Yes; we had the doctor."

Then Jurgis stood a few seconds, wavering. He did not shed a tear. He
took one glance more at the blanket with the little form beneath it,
and then turned suddenly to the ladder and climbed down again. A silence
fell once more in the room as he entered. He went straight to the door,
passed out, and started down the street.

When his wife had died, Jurgis made for the nearest saloon, but he did
not do that now, though he had his week's wages in his pocket. He walked
and walked, seeing nothing, splashing through mud and water. Later on he
sat down upon a step and hid his face in his hands and for half an hour
or so he did not move. Now and then he would whisper to himself: "Dead!
Dead!"

Finally, he got up and walked on again. It was about sunset, and he went
on and on until it was dark, when he was stopped by a railroad crossing.
The gates were down, and a long train of freight cars was thundering by.
He stood and watched it; and all at once a wild impulse seized him, a
thought that had been lurking within him, unspoken, unrecognized, leaped
into sudden life. He started down the track, and when he was past the
gate-keeper's shanty he sprang forward and swung himself on to one of
the cars.

By and by the train stopped again, and Jurgis sprang down and ran under
the car, and hid himself upon the truck. Here he sat, and when the train
started again, he fought a battle with his soul. He gripped his hands
and set his teeth together--he had not wept, and he would not--not a
tear! It was past and over, and he was done with it--he would fling it
off his shoulders, be free of it, the whole business, that night. It
should go like a black, hateful nightmare, and in the morning he would
be a new man. And every time that a thought of it assailed him--a tender
memory, a trace of a tear--he rose up, cursing with rage, and pounded it
down.

He was fighting for his life; he gnashed his teeth together in his
desperation. He had been a fool, a fool! He had wasted his life, he had
wrecked himself, with his accursed weakness; and now he was done with
it--he would tear it out of him, root and branch! There should be no
more tears and no more tenderness; he had had enough of them--they had
sold him into slavery! Now he was going to be free, to tear off his
shackles, to rise up and fight. He was glad that the end had come--it
had to come some time, and it was just as well now. This was no world
for women and children, and the sooner they got out of it the better
for them. Whatever Antanas might suffer where he was, he could suffer
no more than he would have had he stayed upon earth. And meantime his
father had thought the last thought about him that he meant to; he was
going to think of himself, he was going to fight for himself, against
the world that had baffled him and tortured him!

So he went on, tearing up all the flowers from the garden of his soul,
and setting his heel upon them. The train thundered deafeningly, and
a storm of dust blew in his face; but though it stopped now and then
through the night, he clung where he was--he would cling there until
he was driven off, for every mile that he got from Packingtown meant
another load from his mind.

Whenever the cars stopped a warm breeze blew upon him, a breeze laden
with the perfume of fresh fields, of honeysuckle and clover. He snuffed
it, and it made his heart beat wildly--he was out in the country again!
He was going to live in the country! When the dawn came he was peering
out with hungry eyes, getting glimpses of meadows and woods and rivers.
At last he could stand it no longer, and when the train stopped again he
crawled out. Upon the top of the car was a brakeman, who shook his fist
and swore; Jurgis waved his hand derisively, and started across the
country.

Only think that he had been a countryman all his life; and for three
long years he had never seen a country sight nor heard a country sound!
Excepting for that one walk when he left jail, when he was too much
worried to notice anything, and for a few times that he had rested
in the city parks in the winter time when he was out of work, he had
literally never seen a tree! And now he felt like a bird lifted up
and borne away upon a gale; he stopped and stared at each new sight of
wonder--at a herd of cows, and a meadow full of daisies, at hedgerows
set thick with June roses, at little birds singing in the trees.

Then he came to a farm-house, and after getting himself a stick for
protection, he approached it. The farmer was greasing a wagon in
front of the barn, and Jurgis went to him. "I would like to get some
breakfast, please," he said.

"Do you want to work?" said the farmer.

"No," said Jurgis. "I don't."

"Then you can't get anything here," snapped the other.

"I meant to pay for it," said Jurgis.

"Oh," said the farmer; and then added sarcastically, "We don't serve
breakfast after 7 A.M."

"I am very hungry," said Jurgis gravely; "I would like to buy some
food."

"Ask the woman," said the farmer, nodding over his shoulder. The "woman"
was more tractable, and for a dime Jurgis secured two thick sandwiches
and a piece of pie and two apples. He walked off eating the pie, as the
least convenient thing to carry. In a few minutes he came to a stream,
and he climbed a fence and walked down the bank, along a woodland path.
By and by he found a comfortable spot, and there he devoured his meal,
slaking his thirst at the stream. Then he lay for hours, just gazing and
drinking in joy; until at last he felt sleepy, and lay down in the shade
of a bush.

When he awoke the sun was shining hot in his face. He sat up and
stretched his arms, and then gazed at the water sliding by. There was a
deep pool, sheltered and silent, below him, and a sudden wonderful idea
rushed upon him. He might have a bath! The water was free, and he might
get into it--all the way into it! It would be the first time that he had
been all the way into the water since he left Lithuania!

When Jurgis had first come to the stockyards he had been as clean as any
workingman could well be. But later on, what with sickness and cold
and hunger and discouragement, and the filthiness of his work, and the
vermin in his home, he had given up washing in winter, and in summer
only as much of him as would go into a basin. He had had a shower bath
in jail, but nothing since--and now he would have a swim!

The water was warm, and he splashed about like a very boy in his glee.
Afterward he sat down in the water near the bank, and proceeded to scrub
himself--soberly and methodically, scouring every inch of him with sand.
While he was doing it he would do it thoroughly, and see how it felt to
be clean. He even scrubbed his head with sand, and combed what the men
called "crumbs" out of his long, black hair, holding his head under
water as long as he could, to see if he could not kill them all. Then,
seeing that the sun was still hot, he took his clothes from the bank
and proceeded to wash them, piece by piece; as the dirt and grease went
floating off downstream he grunted with satisfaction and soused the
clothes again, venturing even to dream that he might get rid of the
fertilizer.

He hung them all up, and while they were drying he lay down in the sun
and had another long sleep. They were hot and stiff as boards on top,
and a little damp on the underside, when he awakened; but being hungry,
he put them on and set out again. He had no knife, but with some labor
he broke himself a good stout club, and, armed with this, he marched
down the road again.

Before long he came to a big farmhouse, and turned up the lane that led
to it. It was just supper-time, and the farmer was washing his hands at
the kitchen door. "Please, sir," said Jurgis, "can I have something to
eat? I can pay." To which the farmer responded promptly, "We don't feed
tramps here. Get out!"

Jurgis went without a word; but as he passed round the barn he came to
a freshly ploughed and harrowed field, in which the farmer had set out
some young peach trees; and as he walked he jerked up a row of them by
the roots, more than a hundred trees in all, before he reached the end
of the field. That was his answer, and it showed his mood; from now on
he was fighting, and the man who hit him would get all that he gave,
every time.

Beyond the orchard Jurgis struck through a patch of woods, and then a
field of winter grain, and came at last to another road. Before long he
saw another farmhouse, and, as it was beginning to cloud over a little,
he asked here for shelter as well as food. Seeing the farmer eying him
dubiously, he added, "I'll be glad to sleep in the barn."

"Well, I dunno," said the other. "Do you smoke?"

"Sometimes," said Jurgis, "but I'll do it out of doors." When the man
had assented, he inquired, "How much will it cost me? I haven't very
much money."

"I reckon about twenty cents for supper," replied the farmer. "I won't
charge ye for the barn."

So Jurgis went in, and sat down at the table with the farmer's wife and
half a dozen children. It was a bountiful meal--there were baked beans
and mashed potatoes and asparagus chopped and stewed, and a dish of
strawberries, and great, thick slices of bread, and a pitcher of milk.
Jurgis had not had such a feast since his wedding day, and he made a
mighty effort to put in his twenty cents' worth.

They were all of them too hungry to talk; but afterward they sat upon
the steps and smoked, and the farmer questioned his guest. When Jurgis
had explained that he was a workingman from Chicago, and that he did not
know just whither he was bound, the other said, "Why don't you stay here
and work for me?"

"I'm not looking for work just now," Jurgis answered.

"I'll pay ye good," said the other, eying his big form--"a dollar a day
and board ye. Help's terrible scarce round here."

"Is that winter as well as summer?" Jurgis demanded quickly.

"N--no," said the farmer; "I couldn't keep ye after November--I ain't
got a big enough place for that."

"I see," said the other, "that's what I thought. When you get through
working your horses this fall, will you turn them out in the snow?"
(Jurgis was beginning to think for himself nowadays.)

"It ain't quite the same," the farmer answered, seeing the point. "There
ought to be work a strong fellow like you can find to do, in the cities,
or some place, in the winter time."

"Yes," said Jurgis, "that's what they all think; and so they crowd into
the cities, and when they have to beg or steal to live, then people
ask 'em why they don't go into the country, where help is scarce." The
farmer meditated awhile.

"How about when your money's gone?" he inquired, finally. "You'll have
to, then, won't you?"

"Wait till she's gone," said Jurgis; "then I'll see."

He had a long sleep in the barn and then a big breakfast of coffee and
bread and oatmeal and stewed cherries, for which the man charged him
only fifteen cents, perhaps having been influenced by his arguments.
Then Jurgis bade farewell, and went on his way.

Such was the beginning of his life as a tramp. It was seldom he got
as fair treatment as from this last farmer, and so as time went on he
learned to shun the houses and to prefer sleeping in the fields. When
it rained he would find a deserted building, if he could, and if not,
he would wait until after dark and then, with his stick ready, begin a
stealthy approach upon a barn. Generally he could get in before the dog
got scent of him, and then he would hide in the hay and be safe until
morning; if not, and the dog attacked him, he would rise up and make a
retreat in battle order. Jurgis was not the mighty man he had once been,
but his arms were still good, and there were few farm dogs he needed to
hit more than once.

Before long there came raspberries, and then blackberries, to help him
save his money; and there were apples in the orchards and potatoes in
the ground--he learned to note the places and fill his pockets after
dark. Twice he even managed to capture a chicken, and had a feast, once
in a deserted barn and the other time in a lonely spot alongside of a
stream. When all of these things failed him he used his money carefully,
but without worry--for he saw that he could earn more whenever he chose.
Half an hour's chopping wood in his lively fashion was enough to bring
him a meal, and when the farmer had seen him working he would sometimes
try to bribe him to stay.

But Jurgis was not staying. He was a free man now, a buccaneer. The old
wanderlust had got into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the
joy of seeking, of hoping without limit. There were mishaps and
discomforts--but at least there was always something new; and only think
what it meant to a man who for years had been penned up in one place,
seeing nothing but one dreary prospect of shanties and factories, to be
suddenly set loose beneath the open sky, to behold new landscapes,
new places, and new people every hour! To a man whose whole life had
consisted of doing one certain thing all day, until he was so exhausted
that he could only lie down and sleep until the next day--and to be now
his own master, working as he pleased and when he pleased, and facing a
new adventure every hour!

Then, too, his health came back to him, all his lost youthful vigor, his
joy and power that he had mourned and forgotten! It came with a sudden
rush, bewildering him, startling him; it was as if his dead childhood
had come back to him, laughing and calling! What with plenty to eat and
fresh air and exercise that was taken as it pleased him, he would waken
from his sleep and start off not knowing what to do with his energy,
stretching his arms, laughing, singing old songs of home that came back
to him. Now and then, of course, he could not help but think of little
Antanas, whom he should never see again, whose little voice he should
never hear; and then he would have to battle with himself. Sometimes at
night he would waken dreaming of Ona, and stretch out his arms to her,
and wet the ground with his tears. But in the morning he would get up
and shake himself, and stride away again to battle with the world.

He never asked where he was nor where he was going; the country was big
enough, he knew, and there was no danger of his coming to the end of it.
And of course he could always have company for the asking--everywhere he
went there were men living just as he lived, and whom he was welcome to
join. He was a stranger at the business, but they were not clannish, and
they taught him all their tricks--what towns and villages it was best
to keep away from, and how to read the secret signs upon the fences, and
when to beg and when to steal, and just how to do both. They laughed at
his ideas of paying for anything with money or with work--for they got
all they wanted without either. Now and then Jurgis camped out with
a gang of them in some woodland haunt, and foraged with them in the
neighborhood at night. And then among them some one would "take a shine"
to him, and they would go off together and travel for a week, exchanging
reminiscences.

Of these professional tramps a great many had, of course, been shiftless
and vicious all their lives. But the vast majority of them had been
workingmen, had fought the long fight as Jurgis had, and found that it
was a losing fight, and given up. Later on he encountered yet another
sort of men, those from whose ranks the tramps were recruited, men who
were homeless and wandering, but still seeking work--seeking it in the
harvest fields. Of these there was an army, the huge surplus labor army
of society; called into being under the stern system of nature, to
do the casual work of the world, the tasks which were transient and
irregular, and yet which had to be done. They did not know that they
were such, of course; they only knew that they sought the job, and that
the job was fleeting. In the early summer they would be in Texas, and
as the crops were ready they would follow north with the season, ending
with the fall in Manitoba. Then they would seek out the big lumber
camps, where there was winter work; or failing in this, would drift to
the cities, and live upon what they had managed to save, with the
help of such transient work as was there the loading and unloading of
steamships and drays, the digging of ditches and the shoveling of snow.
If there were more of them on hand than chanced to be needed, the weaker
ones died off of cold and hunger, again according to the stern system of
nature.

It was in the latter part of July, when Jurgis was in Missouri, that
he came upon the harvest work. Here were crops that men had worked for
three or four months to prepare, and of which they would lose nearly
all unless they could find others to help them for a week or two. So all
over the land there was a cry for labor--agencies were set up and all
the cities were drained of men, even college boys were brought by the
carload, and hordes of frantic farmers would hold up trains and carry
off wagon-loads of men by main force. Not that they did not pay them
well--any man could get two dollars a day and his board, and the best
men could get two dollars and a half or three.

The harvest-fever was in the very air, and no man with any spirit in
him could be in that region and not catch it. Jurgis joined a gang and
worked from dawn till dark, eighteen hours a day, for two weeks without
a break. Then he had a sum of money that would have been a fortune to
him in the old days of misery--but what could he do with it now? To be
sure he might have put it in a bank, and, if he were fortunate, get
it back again when he wanted it. But Jurgis was now a homeless man,
wandering over a continent; and what did he know about banking and
drafts and letters of credit? If he carried the money about with him, he
would surely be robbed in the end; and so what was there for him to do
but enjoy it while he could? On a Saturday night he drifted into a town
with his fellows; and because it was raining, and there was no other
place provided for him, he went to a saloon. And there were some who
treated him and whom he had to treat, and there was laughter and singing
and good cheer; and then out of the rear part of the saloon a girl's
face, red-cheeked and merry, smiled at Jurgis, and his heart thumped
suddenly in his throat. He nodded to her, and she came and sat by him,
and they had more drink, and then he went upstairs into a room with her,
and the wild beast rose up within him and screamed, as it has screamed
in the Jungle from the dawn of time. And then because of his memories
and his shame, he was glad when others joined them, men and women; and
they had more drink and spent the night in wild rioting and debauchery.
In the van of the surplus-labor army, there followed another, an army of
women, they also struggling for life under the stern system of nature.
Because there were rich men who sought pleasure, there had been ease and
plenty for them so long as they were young and beautiful; and later on,
when they were crowded out by others younger and more beautiful, they
went out to follow upon the trail of the workingmen. Sometimes they came
of themselves, and the saloon-keepers shared with them; or sometimes
they were handled by agencies, the same as the labor army. They were in
the towns in harvest time, near the lumber camps in the winter, in
the cities when the men came there; if a regiment were encamped, or a
railroad or canal being made, or a great exposition getting ready, the
crowd of women were on hand, living in shanties or saloons or tenement
rooms, sometimes eight or ten of them together.

In the morning Jurgis had not a cent, and he went out upon the road
again. He was sick and disgusted, but after the new plan of his life, he
crushed his feelings down. He had made a fool of himself, but he could
not help it now--all he could do was to see that it did not happen
again. So he tramped on until exercise and fresh air banished his
headache, and his strength and joy returned. This happened to him every
time, for Jurgis was still a creature of impulse, and his pleasures had
not yet become business. It would be a long time before he could be like
the majority of these men of the road, who roamed until the hunger for
drink and for women mastered them, and then went to work with a purpose
in mind, and stopped when they had the price of a spree.

On the contrary, try as he would, Jurgis could not help being made
miserable by his conscience. It was the ghost that would not down. It
would come upon him in the most unexpected places--sometimes it fairly
drove him to drink.

One night he was caught by a thunderstorm, and he sought shelter in a
little house just outside of a town. It was a working-man's home, and
the owner was a Slav like himself, a new emigrant from White Russia; he
bade Jurgis welcome in his home language, and told him to come to the
kitchen-fire and dry himself. He had no bed for him, but there was straw
in the garret, and he could make out. The man's wife was cooking the
supper, and their children were playing about on the floor. Jurgis sat
and exchanged thoughts with him about the old country, and the places
where they had been and the work they had done. Then they ate, and
afterward sat and smoked and talked more about America, and how they
found it. In the middle of a sentence, however, Jurgis stopped, seeing
that the woman had brought a big basin of water and was proceeding to
undress her youngest baby. The rest had crawled into the closet where
they slept, but the baby was to have a bath, the workingman explained.
The nights had begun to be chilly, and his mother, ignorant as to the
climate in America, had sewed him up for the winter; then it had turned
warm again, and some kind of a rash had broken out on the child. The
doctor had said she must bathe him every night, and she, foolish woman,
believed him.

Jurgis scarcely heard the explanation; he was watching the baby. He was
about a year old, and a sturdy little fellow, with soft fat legs, and a
round ball of a stomach, and eyes as black as coals. His pimples did
not seem to bother him much, and he was wild with glee over the bath,
kicking and squirming and chuckling with delight, pulling at his
mother's face and then at his own little toes. When she put him into the
basin he sat in the midst of it and grinned, splashing the water over
himself and squealing like a little pig. He spoke in Russian, of which
Jurgis knew some; he spoke it with the quaintest of baby accents--and
every word of it brought back to Jurgis some word of his own dead little
one, and stabbed him like a knife. He sat perfectly motionless, silent,
but gripping his hands tightly, while a storm gathered in his bosom and
a flood heaped itself up behind his eyes. And in the end he could bear
it no more, but buried his face in his hands and burst into tears, to
the alarm and amazement of his hosts. Between the shame of this and his
woe Jurgis could not stand it, and got up and rushed out into the rain.

He went on and on down the road, finally coming to a black woods, where
he hid and wept as if his heart would break. Ah, what agony was that,
what despair, when the tomb of memory was rent open and the ghosts of
his old life came forth to scourge him! What terror to see what he had
been and now could never be--to see Ona and his child and his own dead
self stretching out their arms to him, calling to him across a bottomless
abyss--and to know that they were gone from him forever, and he writhing
and suffocating in the mire of his own vileness!

Jurgis takes the news of Antanas's death "in a peculiar way. Instead of screaming or erupting in anger, he goes up to the loft where Elzbieta and Marija are mourning. He asks if the boy is really dead, and they confirm it. Jurgis then leaves the loft and walks out of the apartment flat. Instead of going straight to the saloon, however, he simply walks. He gets to the train yard and a strange thought overtakes him. He sneaks past the train keeper's shed and jumps on a moving freight car that takes him out of the city and into the country. Jurgis decides now that he will leave the slavery of the city and become free. He decides, "This was no world for women and children, and the sooner they got out of it the better for them. He decides that he is now going to fight for his life, fight for himself. He rides the train through the night and whenever it stops, he can smell the freshness of the countryside. He thinks that he was a country man all his life, and for the past three years he has never seen the country. In fact, he thinks that for those years he has not even seen a tree except in the few city parks that he would sleep in when he could not find work. Jurgis comes to a farmhouse and asks for a meal. For twenty cents, the farmer's wife gives him a good breakfast and Jurgis takes it down to the woods and to a stream. At the stream, Jurgis bathes and washes his clothes. He eats and sets off again. He stops at several farmers' homes and each time is able to get a meal for a bit of work on the farm or for just a few dimes. Each time the farmers ask him to stay and work, but when Jurgis asks if the work will last past November, the farmers tell him no. He asks one farmer if they would treat their horses in this way, working them in the summer months and then releasing them when it turns cold, and each admits that they would not. Jurgis is soon living the life of a tramp. He learns all the tricks of the trade. Most of the tramps, he learns, never pay for a meal and never do a bit of work for their shelter. He sneaks into barns at night and steals food when he can. When farmers are not fair to him, he sleeps in the fields and eats wild berries. Soon, his health returns to him, and although he sometimes thinks of his dead son, he always rises in the morning to "stride away again to battle with the world. He falls in with the tramps and the migrant workers who begin their work in Texas and, as the weather warms, move north, picking up work along the way, until they end up in Canada and begin to make their way south again. During one harvest season, Jurgis finds himself in Missouri where the farmers must hire great numbers of men in order to harvest the fields. Men earn good wages during these weeks, and at the end of the season, Jurgis finds that he has a large sum of money in his pocket. Because he is a tramp and knows nothing of banks, he decides he should simply spend it all in a night of debauchery and drink in a saloon. There is a whole industry of prostitution that follows the migrant workers wherever they go during the season, and Jurgis takes one of these women. He feels bad after that night, but he quashes those feelings and sets off on the road again. One night, he finds the house of a farmer and immigrant Slav like himself. He and the man talk and Jurgis watches as the man's wife bathes their one-year-old son. As he looks at the baby, Jurgis feels intense pain over the loss of his son and weeps and cries and leaves the house

Jurgis stands still in shock for a few minutes after Mrs. Jukniene tells him that his baby son is dead. Then, Jurgis goes upstairs to the attic. He finds Teta Elzbieta fainting next to Antanas's body. Marija is pacing and screaming. Marija tells Jurgis that Antanas refused to listen to any of the women of the house. He ran outside without paying attention to their warnings not to do so. Once outside, he got caught in the mud and drowned in the street. Jurgis goes straight out the door. But this time, he doesn't walk to the nearest bar. He just keeps walking. Jurgis decides that Antanas is better off dead. This is no world for women and children. Now Jurgis is free at last. He's going to fight against the world. Jurgis jumps on a passing train and rides out into the countryside. It's been so long since he has seen the fresh landscape of the country - even trees, he hasn't seen since coming to the United States. Jurgis jumps off the train and goes to a nearby farmhouse. Jurgis buys some breakfast from the farmer's wife. He lies down next to a stream and feels sleepy and happy. When he wakes up, he decides to have a proper bath in a nearby pool. Jurgis feels like a child again as he swims around. He begins to feel clean at last as he washes all the crap and lice out of his hair and off his body. Jurgis washes his clothes as well. He hopes that they will stop smelling of fertilizer. Jurgis naps in the sun as he hangs his clothes up to dry. Jurgis walks to another farmhouse and asks to buy food. The farmer tells Jurgis to go away: "We don't feed tramps here" . Jurgis walks off, but in revenge, he yanks all the farmer's newly planted baby peach trees out of the ground. Jurgis has decided that he's not going to take anymore bad treatment from anyone ever again. Jurgis reaches another farmhouse. He offers to pay for food and shelter. The farmer accepts his money for dinner and lets Jurgis stay in his barn for free. The farmer offers Jurgis a job after dinner. Jurgis refuses; he doesn't want another job that isn't year round . The next day, Jurgis heads off again. Jurgis is becoming a tramp. He sleeps in fields and shelters in deserted buildings when it rains. Jurgis lives off the land as much as he can. He picks blackberries, raspberries, apples, and other things that are making us hungry to think about. Eating good food, resting plenty, and working as much as he needs to to get by, Jurgis finds his health coming back. Jurgis occasionally hangs out with other tramps and hobos, but mostly, he walks where he wants to go. Harvest season comes around. Jurgis finds plenty of work and plenty of money. Now he has nothing to spend it on and no reason to save. So, on a Saturday night, Jurgis goes into town and has a rioting good time with a prostitute. He wakes up the next morning penniless and ashamed of himself. Jurgis walks out of town and tries to repress his guilt, but he can't. He still feels that he has done the wrong thing by falling into this cycle of working hard and playing hard. One night, there is a big storm. Jurgis shelters with a farmer and his family. This farmer is a new immigrant from Russia. He has a baby, a little boy about a year old. This baby has a rash all over his body - nothing too serious; it sounds like heat rash. The baby is very healthy looking in spite of his red spots. Jurgis sees this happy child, enjoying life even though he is suffering some physical setbacks. He hears the baby lisping Russian to his mother. Jurgis suddenly starts to cry. He is heartbroken that he has lost his family and he is ashamed of his own behavior after their deaths.

In shock over his son's accidental drowning, Jurgis walks away and impulsively climbs aboard a freight train. Jurgis tries to think only of himself as the train heads toward the country. He buys food at one farmhouse and takes a bath in a pond. When another farmer refuses to sell him food, Jurgis responds by destroying 100 recently planted peach trees. Jurgis becomes a professional tramp, living from day to day, working and stealing enough to get by. For the most part he is able to forget his family and his past, but when he watches a mother bathe her young son, Jurgis has an emotional breakdown.

The change in environment results in a physical change in Jurgis. For the first time in years he is able to bathe and lose the stench of the fertilizer plant from himself and his clothes. This is a symbolic baptism, a cleansing into new life. However, Sinclair does not create the typical literary pastoral, where rural life is presented in an idealized manner. Instead, some of the same problems evident in the city exist in the country, with some farmers treating animals better than they treat workers. Jurgis' life as a tramp does refresh and revive him. This remarkable and uplifting change is the direct result of escaping the city; however, the escape cannot be permanent. One sign of the corruption and evils of capitalism follows the migratory workers: bands of prostitutes. Glossary wanderlust an impulse, longing, or urge to wander or travel. reminiscences an account, written or spoken, of remembered experiences. dray a low, sturdily built cart with detachable sides, for carrying heavy loads. debauchery extreme indulgence of one's appetites, especially for sensual pleasure.

Jurgis looks at Antanas's dead body and leaves the house without a word. He walks to the nearest railway crossing and hides in a car. During his journey, he fights every sign of grief and emotion. He regards his experiences up until now as a lengthy nightmare that he has had to endure. He rides the railway car into the country. The clean air and space revive him, and he jumps off when the train stops. He bathes and washes his clothes in the nearest stream. He tries to buy food at a farmhouse but the farmer sends him away because he doesn't feed "tramps. Jurgis makes his way across the farmer's field, ripping up a hundred young peach trees in response. Another farmer is kind enough to sell Jurgis a dinner and let him sleep in the barn. He offers Jurgis work; Jurgis asks if there is enough to last all winter. The farmer says that he can guarantee work only through November. Jurgis sarcastically asks if he turns his horses out for the winter as well since they are useful for only part of the year. The farmer asks why a strong man cannot find work in the cities in the winter. Jurgis explains that everyone thinks that there must be work in the city in the winter and that the cities therefore become overcrowded. As a result, many of these laborers end up having to steal and beg in order to survive. Jurgis turns down the farmer's offer of work and continues on his way. Jurgis earns a few meals with odd jobs, stealing and foraging when he isn't working. After a while, he stops asking for shelter from farmers because so many are hostile to him. He feels like his own master again. He learns a few tricks and secrets from the other tramps in the countryside. Farmers are almost frantic for help during this season, and work is easy to find. Jurgis works for two weeks and receives a sum that he would have earlier considered a fortune. He spends all of it on alcohol and women in one night, and his own conscience judges him mercilessly for this waste

As Sinclair portrays the destruction of the immigrant family through the brutal machinery of turn-of-the-century capitalism, he continues to focus principally on the development of Jurgis's character. The accumulated tragedies in his life have emptied his emotional reserves, as evidenced by his inability to grieve adequately for his son. This final blow compels him to abandon the moral and social principles  to which he has thus far clung and instead adopt the dog-eat-dog values of the world in which he lives. According to this new outlook, if someone deals him a blow, he deals one back. When the farmer refuses to sell him a meal, Jurgis responds by vandalizing his property, tearing up his newly planted peach trees. The conditions of poverty and misery created by capitalism have annihilated his ability to invest emotionally in his family, and he abandons Teta Elzbieta, Marija, and the other children because he does not have the emotional reserves to watch them sink, either literally or figuratively, into ruin. Without this crucial anchor, Jurgis gives himself over to complete debauchery--Sinclair again positions capitalism as a threat to fundamental American values. The religious revival serves as an attack on the misdirected efforts of organized religion. Like the misdirected philanthropy of the rich woman in Chapter 21, Christianity here does nothing to improve the lives of wage laborers. It preaches morality but fails to provide the material conditions necessary for one to be a moral person. Jurgis's encounter with Freddie Jones is obviously meant to illustrate the vast difference in standard of living between employers and the wage laborers who work for them. Jones is a drunken, wasteful fop who hands out one-hundred-dollar bills as if they were nothing; he has no conception of the value of money. Moreover, the luxury and opulence of Freddie's home illustrate his father's extravagant waste of the wealth generated through wage slavery. This disparity between a laborer such as Jurgis, who has long worked in grueling conditions with virtually no reward, and Freddie, who has certainly never had to face anything remotely resembling Jurgis's ghastly reality but who nonetheless reaps the benefit of hard work--others' hard work--is a crystal clear manifestation of Sinclair's advocacy of socialism and equal distribution of wealth. Occasionally, Sinclair's political fervor overwhelms the stylistic constraints that he has set for himself. The realist style that Sinclair uses to expose appalling working conditions requires consistent adherence throughout the text because deviation from it reveals the text to be contrived. The horror of the packing plant loses its rhetorical force if other events are not believable. For example, Sinclair's realism falters in the dialogue between Jurgis and Freddie. Sinclair renders the speech of the drunken Freddie with a consummate, almost exaggerated, realism. He stutters, slurs his speech, and wanders from thought to thought. Jurgis's dialogue, conversely, is idealized. When the butler begins to threaten "I'll have the police--", Jurgis interjects with a clever play on words, shouting "Have 'em!" This pun on the word "have" seems beyond the language skills of an uneducated Lithuanian immigrant. Similarly, Jurgis's cry, "I'll not have you touch me!" seems too polished for someone of his social status. The inconsistent treatment of dialogue in this example mirrors the inconsistent realism in the text as a whole. Sinclair places capitalists and capitalism under a glaring spotlight and reports every ugly detail; however, he spares his protagonist and the working classes realistic treatment that might reflect poorly on them. They are often glorified, idealized, and flattened into one-dimensional types.


Early in the fall Jurgis set out for Chicago again. All the joy went out
of tramping as soon as a man could not keep warm in the hay; and, like
many thousands of others, he deluded himself with the hope that by
coming early he could avoid the rush. He brought fifteen dollars with
him, hidden away in one of his shoes, a sum which had been saved from
the saloon-keepers, not so much by his conscience, as by the fear which
filled him at the thought of being out of work in the city in the winter
time.

He traveled upon the railroad with several other men, hiding in freight
cars at night, and liable to be thrown off at any time, regardless of
the speed of the train. When he reached the city he left the rest, for
he had money and they did not, and he meant to save himself in this
fight. He would bring to it all the skill that practice had brought him,
and he would stand, whoever fell. On fair nights he would sleep in the
park or on a truck or an empty barrel or box, and when it was rainy or
cold he would stow himself upon a shelf in a ten-cent lodging-house,
or pay three cents for the privileges of a "squatter" in a tenement
hallway. He would eat at free lunches, five cents a meal, and never a
cent more--so he might keep alive for two months and more, and in that
time he would surely find a job. He would have to bid farewell to
his summer cleanliness, of course, for he would come out of the first
night's lodging with his clothes alive with vermin. There was no place
in the city where he could wash even his face, unless he went down to
the lake front--and there it would soon be all ice.

First he went to the steel mill and the harvester works, and found that
his places there had been filled long ago. He was careful to keep away
from the stockyards--he was a single man now, he told himself, and he
meant to stay one, to have his wages for his own when he got a job. He
began the long, weary round of factories and warehouses, tramping all
day, from one end of the city to the other, finding everywhere from ten
to a hundred men ahead of him. He watched the newspapers, too--but no
longer was he to be taken in by smooth-spoken agents. He had been told
of all those tricks while "on the road."

In the end it was through a newspaper that he got a job, after nearly
a month of seeking. It was a call for a hundred laborers, and though he
thought it was a "fake," he went because the place was near by. He found
a line of men a block long, but as a wagon chanced to come out of an
alley and break the line, he saw his chance and sprang to seize a place.
Men threatened him and tried to throw him out, but he cursed and made
a disturbance to attract a policeman, upon which they subsided, knowing
that if the latter interfered it would be to "fire" them all.

An hour or two later he entered a room and confronted a big Irishman
behind a desk.

"Ever worked in Chicago before?" the man inquired; and whether it was
a good angel that put it into Jurgis's mind, or an intuition of his
sharpened wits, he was moved to answer, "No, sir."

"Where do you come from?"

"Kansas City, sir."

"Any references?"

"No, sir. I'm just an unskilled man. I've got good arms."

"I want men for hard work--it's all underground, digging tunnels for
telephones. Maybe it won't suit you."

"I'm willing, sir--anything for me. What's the pay?"

"Fifteen cents an hour."

"I'm willing, sir."

"All right; go back there and give your name."

So within half an hour he was at work, far underneath the streets of the
city. The tunnel was a peculiar one for telephone wires; it was
about eight feet high, and with a level floor nearly as wide. It had
innumerable branches--a perfect spider web beneath the city; Jurgis
walked over half a mile with his gang to the place where they were to
work. Stranger yet, the tunnel was lighted by electricity, and upon it
was laid a double-tracked, narrow-gauge railroad!

But Jurgis was not there to ask questions, and he did not give the
matter a thought. It was nearly a year afterward that he finally learned
the meaning of this whole affair. The City Council had passed a quiet
and innocent little bill allowing a company to construct telephone
conduits under the city streets; and upon the strength of this, a great
corporation had proceeded to tunnel all Chicago with a system of railway
freight-subways. In the city there was a combination of employers,
representing hundreds of millions of capital, and formed for the purpose
of crushing the labor unions. The chief union which troubled it was the
teamsters'; and when these freight tunnels were completed, connecting
all the big factories and stores with the railroad depots, they would
have the teamsters' union by the throat. Now and then there were rumors
and murmurs in the Board of Aldermen, and once there was a committee to
investigate--but each time another small fortune was paid over, and the
rumors died away; until at last the city woke up with a start to find
the work completed. There was a tremendous scandal, of course; it
was found that the city records had been falsified and other
crimes committed, and some of Chicago's big capitalists got into
jail--figuratively speaking. The aldermen declared that they had had no
idea of it all, in spite of the fact that the main entrance to the work
had been in the rear of the saloon of one of them.

It was in a newly opened cut that Jurgis worked, and so he knew that he
had an all-winter job. He was so rejoiced that he treated himself to a
spree that night, and with the balance of his money he hired himself
a place in a tenement room, where he slept upon a big homemade straw
mattress along with four other workingmen. This was one dollar a week,
and for four more he got his food in a boardinghouse near his work. This
would leave him four dollars extra each week, an unthinkable sum for
him. At the outset he had to pay for his digging tools, and also to buy
a pair of heavy boots, since his shoes were falling to pieces, and a
flannel shirt, since the one he had worn all summer was in shreds. He
spent a week meditating whether or not he should also buy an overcoat.
There was one belonging to a Hebrew collar button peddler, who had died
in the room next to him, and which the landlady was holding for her
rent; in the end, however, Jurgis decided to do without it, as he was to
be underground by day and in bed at night.

This was an unfortunate decision, however, for it drove him more quickly
than ever into the saloons. From now on Jurgis worked from seven o'clock
until half-past five, with half an hour for dinner; which meant that he
never saw the sunlight on weekdays. In the evenings there was no place
for him to go except a barroom; no place where there was light and
warmth, where he could hear a little music or sit with a companion
and talk. He had now no home to go to; he had no affection left in his
life--only the pitiful mockery of it in the camaraderie of vice. On
Sundays the churches were open--but where was there a church in which an
ill-smelling workingman, with vermin crawling upon his neck, could sit
without seeing people edge away and look annoyed? He had, of course,
his corner in a close though unheated room, with a window opening upon
a blank wall two feet away; and also he had the bare streets, with
the winter gales sweeping through them; besides this he had only the
saloons--and, of course, he had to drink to stay in them. If he drank
now and then he was free to make himself at home, to gamble with dice or
a pack of greasy cards, to play at a dingy pool table for money, or to
look at a beer-stained pink "sporting paper," with pictures of murderers
and half-naked women. It was for such pleasures as these that he spent
his money; and such was his life during the six weeks and a half that he
toiled for the merchants of Chicago, to enable them to break the grip of
their teamsters' union.

In a work thus carried out, not much thought was given to the welfare of
the laborers. On an average, the tunneling cost a life a day and several
manglings; it was seldom, however, that more than a dozen or two men
heard of any one accident. The work was all done by the new boring
machinery, with as little blasting as possible; but there would be
falling rocks and crushed supports, and premature explosions--and in
addition all the dangers of railroading. So it was that one night, as
Jurgis was on his way out with his gang, an engine and a loaded car
dashed round one of the innumerable right-angle branches and struck him
upon the shoulder, hurling him against the concrete wall and knocking
him senseless.

When he opened his eyes again it was to the clanging of the bell of
an ambulance. He was lying in it, covered by a blanket, and it was
threading its way slowly through the holiday-shopping crowds. They took
him to the county hospital, where a young surgeon set his arm; then he
was washed and laid upon a bed in a ward with a score or two more of
maimed and mangled men.

Jurgis spent his Christmas in this hospital, and it was the pleasantest
Christmas he had had in America. Every year there were scandals and
investigations in this institution, the newspapers charging that doctors
were allowed to try fantastic experiments upon the patients; but Jurgis
knew nothing of this--his only complaint was that they used to feed him
upon tinned meat, which no man who had ever worked in Packingtown would
feed to his dog. Jurgis had often wondered just who ate the canned
corned beef and "roast beef" of the stockyards; now he began to
understand--that it was what you might call "graft meat," put up to
be sold to public officials and contractors, and eaten by soldiers and
sailors, prisoners and inmates of institutions, "shantymen" and gangs of
railroad laborers.

Jurgis was ready to leave the hospital at the end of two weeks. This
did not mean that his arm was strong and that he was able to go back to
work, but simply that he could get along without further attention, and
that his place was needed for some one worse off than he. That he was
utterly helpless, and had no means of keeping himself alive in the
meantime, was something which did not concern the hospital authorities,
nor any one else in the city.

As it chanced, he had been hurt on a Monday, and had just paid for his
last week's board and his room rent, and spent nearly all the balance of
his Saturday's pay. He had less than seventy-five cents in his pockets,
and a dollar and a half due him for the day's work he had done before he
was hurt. He might possibly have sued the company, and got some damages
for his injuries, but he did not know this, and it was not the company's
business to tell him. He went and got his pay and his tools, which he
left in a pawnshop for fifty cents. Then he went to his landlady,
who had rented his place and had no other for him; and then to his
boardinghouse keeper, who looked him over and questioned him. As he must
certainly be helpless for a couple of months, and had boarded there only
six weeks, she decided very quickly that it would not be worth the risk
to keep him on trust.

So Jurgis went out into the streets, in a most dreadful plight. It was
bitterly cold, and a heavy snow was falling, beating into his face.
He had no overcoat, and no place to go, and two dollars and sixty-five
cents in his pocket, with the certainty that he could not earn another
cent for months. The snow meant no chance to him now; he must walk along
and see others shoveling, vigorous and active--and he with his left arm
bound to his side! He could not hope to tide himself over by odd jobs
of loading trucks; he could not even sell newspapers or carry satchels,
because he was now at the mercy of any rival. Words could not paint the
terror that came over him as he realized all this. He was like a wounded
animal in the forest; he was forced to compete with his enemies upon
unequal terms. There would be no consideration for him because of his
weakness--it was no one's business to help him in such distress, to make
the fight the least bit easier for him. Even if he took to begging, he
would be at a disadvantage, for reasons which he was to discover in good
time.

In the beginning he could not think of anything except getting out of
the awful cold. He went into one of the saloons he had been wont to
frequent and bought a drink, and then stood by the fire shivering and
waiting to be ordered out. According to an unwritten law, the buying a
drink included the privilege of loafing for just so long; then one
had to buy another drink or move on. That Jurgis was an old customer
entitled him to a somewhat longer stop; but then he had been away two
weeks, and was evidently "on the bum." He might plead and tell his "hard
luck story," but that would not help him much; a saloon-keeper who was
to be moved by such means would soon have his place jammed to the doors
with "hoboes" on a day like this.

So Jurgis went out into another place, and paid another nickel. He
was so hungry this time that he could not resist the hot beef stew, an
indulgence which cut short his stay by a considerable time. When he was
again told to move on, he made his way to a "tough" place in the
"Levee" district, where now and then he had gone with a certain rat-eyed
Bohemian workingman of his acquaintance, seeking a woman. It was
Jurgis's vain hope that here the proprietor would let him remain as a
"sitter." In low-class places, in the dead of winter, saloon-keepers
would often allow one or two forlorn-looking bums who came in covered
with snow or soaked with rain to sit by the fire and look miserable to
attract custom. A workingman would come in, feeling cheerful after his
day's work was over, and it would trouble him to have to take his glass
with such a sight under his nose; and so he would call out: "Hello, Bub,
what's the matter? You look as if you'd been up against it!" And then
the other would begin to pour out some tale of misery, and the man would
say, "Come have a glass, and maybe that'll brace you up." And so
they would drink together, and if the tramp was sufficiently
wretched-looking, or good enough at the "gab," they might have two; and
if they were to discover that they were from the same country, or had
lived in the same city or worked at the same trade, they might sit down
at a table and spend an hour or two in talk--and before they got through
the saloon-keeper would have taken in a dollar. All of this might seem
diabolical, but the saloon-keeper was in no wise to blame for it. He
was in the same plight as the manufacturer who has to adulterate and
misrepresent his product. If he does not, some one else will; and the
saloon-keeper, unless he is also an alderman, is apt to be in debt to
the big brewers, and on the verge of being sold out.

The market for "sitters" was glutted that afternoon, however, and there
was no place for Jurgis. In all he had to spend six nickels in keeping a
shelter over him that frightful day, and then it was just dark, and
the station houses would not open until midnight! At the last place,
however, there was a bartender who knew him and liked him, and let him
doze at one of the tables until the boss came back; and also, as he
was going out, the man gave him a tip--on the next block there was a
religious revival of some sort, with preaching and singing, and hundreds
of hoboes would go there for the shelter and warmth.

Jurgis went straightway, and saw a sign hung out, saying that the door
would open at seven-thirty; then he walked, or half ran, a block, and
hid awhile in a doorway and then ran again, and so on until the hour.
At the end he was all but frozen, and fought his way in with the rest of
the throng (at the risk of having his arm broken again), and got close
to the big stove.

By eight o'clock the place was so crowded that the speakers ought to
have been flattered; the aisles were filled halfway up, and at the door
men were packed tight enough to walk upon. There were three elderly
gentlemen in black upon the platform, and a young lady who played the
piano in front. First they sang a hymn, and then one of the three, a
tall, smooth-shaven man, very thin, and wearing black spectacles, began
an address. Jurgis heard smatterings of it, for the reason that terror
kept him awake--he knew that he snored abominably, and to have been put
out just then would have been like a sentence of death to him.

The evangelist was preaching "sin and redemption," the infinite grace of
God and His pardon for human frailty. He was very much in earnest, and
he meant well, but Jurgis, as he listened, found his soul filled with
hatred. What did he know about sin and suffering--with his smooth, black
coat and his neatly starched collar, his body warm, and his belly full,
and money in his pocket--and lecturing men who were struggling for their
lives, men at the death grapple with the demon powers of hunger and
cold!--This, of course, was unfair; but Jurgis felt that these men were
out of touch with the life they discussed, that they were unfitted to
solve its problems; nay, they themselves were part of the problem--they
were part of the order established that was crushing men down and
beating them! They were of the triumphant and insolent possessors; they
had a hall, and a fire, and food and clothing and money, and so they
might preach to hungry men, and the hungry men must be humble and
listen! They were trying to save their souls--and who but a fool could
fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they
had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies?

At eleven the meeting closed, and the desolate audience filed out into
the snow, muttering curses upon the few traitors who had got repentance
and gone up on the platform. It was yet an hour before the station
house would open, and Jurgis had no overcoat--and was weak from a long
illness. During that hour he nearly perished. He was obliged to run hard
to keep his blood moving at all--and then he came back to the station
house and found a crowd blocking the street before the door! This was in
the month of January, 1904, when the country was on the verge of "hard
times," and the newspapers were reporting the shutting down of factories
every day--it was estimated that a million and a half men were thrown
out of work before the spring. So all the hiding places of the city were
crowded, and before that station house door men fought and tore each
other like savage beasts. When at last the place was jammed and they
shut the doors, half the crowd was still outside; and Jurgis, with his
helpless arm, was among them. There was no choice then but to go to a
lodging-house and spend another dime. It really broke his heart to do
this, at half-past twelve o'clock, after he had wasted the night at the
meeting and on the street. He would be turned out of the lodging-house
promptly at seven--they had the shelves which served as bunks so
contrived that they could be dropped, and any man who was slow about
obeying orders could be tumbled to the floor.

This was one day, and the cold spell lasted for fourteen of them. At the
end of six days every cent of Jurgis' money was gone; and then he went
out on the streets to beg for his life.

He would begin as soon as the business of the city was moving. He would
sally forth from a saloon, and, after making sure there was no policeman
in sight, would approach every likely-looking person who passed him,
telling his woeful story and pleading for a nickel or a dime. Then when
he got one, he would dart round the corner and return to his base to get
warm; and his victim, seeing him do this, would go away, vowing that he
would never give a cent to a beggar again. The victim never paused to
ask where else Jurgis could have gone under the circumstances--where
he, the victim, would have gone. At the saloon Jurgis could not only get
more food and better food than he could buy in any restaurant for the
same money, but a drink in the bargain to warm him up. Also he could
find a comfortable seat by a fire, and could chat with a companion until
he was as warm as toast. At the saloon, too, he felt at home. Part of
the saloon-keeper's business was to offer a home and refreshments to
beggars in exchange for the proceeds of their foragings; and was there
any one else in the whole city who would do this--would the victim have
done it himself?

Poor Jurgis might have been expected to make a successful beggar. He
was just out of the hospital, and desperately sick-looking, and with
a helpless arm; also he had no overcoat, and shivered pitifully. But,
alas, it was again the case of the honest merchant, who finds that the
genuine and unadulterated article is driven to the wall by the artistic
counterfeit. Jurgis, as a beggar, was simply a blundering amateur in
competition with organized and scientific professionalism. He was just
out of the hospital--but the story was worn threadbare, and how could
he prove it? He had his arm in a sling--and it was a device a regular
beggar's little boy would have scorned. He was pale and shivering--but
they were made up with cosmetics, and had studied the art of chattering
their teeth. As to his being without an overcoat, among them you would
meet men you could swear had on nothing but a ragged linen duster and
a pair of cotton trousers--so cleverly had they concealed the several
suits of all-wool underwear beneath. Many of these professional
mendicants had comfortable homes, and families, and thousands of dollars
in the bank; some of them had retired upon their earnings, and gone into
the business of fitting out and doctoring others, or working children
at the trade. There were some who had both their arms bound tightly to
their sides, and padded stumps in their sleeves, and a sick child hired
to carry a cup for them. There were some who had no legs, and pushed
themselves upon a wheeled platform--some who had been favored with
blindness, and were led by pretty little dogs. Some less fortunate had
mutilated themselves or burned themselves, or had brought horrible sores
upon themselves with chemicals; you might suddenly encounter upon the
street a man holding out to you a finger rotting and discolored with
gangrene--or one with livid scarlet wounds half escaped from their
filthy bandages. These desperate ones were the dregs of the city's
cesspools, wretches who hid at night in the rain-soaked cellars of
old ramshackle tenements, in "stale-beer dives" and opium joints, with
abandoned women in the last stages of the harlot's progress--women who
had been kept by Chinamen and turned away at last to die. Every day
the police net would drag hundreds of them off the streets, and in the
detention hospital you might see them, herded together in a miniature
inferno, with hideous, beastly faces, bloated and leprous with disease,
laughing, shouting, screaming in all stages of drunkenness, barking like
dogs, gibbering like apes, raving and tearing themselves in delirium.

After spending a season in the countryside, Jurgis heads back into the city to find work for the winter. He brings with him fifteen dollars from his earnings, which he believes will buy him some time to find a job and a place to stay while looking for work. Jurgis begins searching all over the city for a job, though not at the packinghouses since he is on the blacklist. There is no work for him at first, but he then stumbles upon a newspaper advertisement offering jobs for one hundred men. Jurgis takes the job and begins the work of building tunnels under the city streets of Chicago. The tunnels are a vast web, lit with electricity and laid with railroad track. A collective of corporations and businesses is building the tunnels in order to break the teamsters' union. When "these freight tunnels were completed, connecting all the big factories and stores with the railroad depots, they would have the teamsters' union by the throat. The tunnels can also be dangerous, however. One night, as Jurgis is leaving the tunnel, one of the rail freight cars gets away and comes barreling down the tunnel. It hits Jurgis on the shoulder, breaking his arm and knocking him out cold. Jurgis spends his Christmas in a hospital, and it is "the pleasantest Christmas he had had in America. After a two-week stay, the hospital kicks him out to the street so that they can give his bed to someone that is worse off than he is. Jurgis has very little money left because he spent most of it at a saloon before being injured. He tries to get his boardinghouse keeper to let him keep his room but, because he is injured, she knows he will not be working and so decides to throw him out instead. Jurgis becomes terrified of the world outside. He knows that he cannot get a job while he is hurt and he cannot even sell papers. Jurgis is "like a wounded animal in the forest;. forced to compete with his enemies upon unequal terms. There is a bitter cold spell that hits Chicago just at this time and so Jurgis spends much of his days just trying to find a place to stay warm. He moves from saloon to saloon, but they will not let him stay too long if he is not a paying customer. Some of the saloonkeepers run a scam in which they allow beggars to come sit by the fire. These beggars draw others in and offer to hear the hard stories of the other men. After a while, the other man has spent a dollar on drinks, and the saloonkeeper has made money. Jurgis attends a religious revival because it takes place in a warm hall. The place is packed with street people and beggars. No one comes for the revival but only to keep warm on the cold night. The evangelist preaches of sin and redemption but this only fills Jurgis's soul with hatred. What did he know about sin and suffering - with his smooth, black coat and his neatly starched collar, his body warm, and his belly full, and money in his pocket - and lecturing men who were struggling for their lives, men at the death-grapple with the demon powers of hunger and cold. Jurgis's final nickels run out and he now has nowhere to sleep. He begins to beg on the street, but he finds that there are even beggars that are professionals and that he is "simply a blundering amateur in competition with organized and scientific professionalism. As pitiful and downtrodden as Jurgis looks, some are even worse off than he is. There are the "dregs of the city's cesspools, wretches who hid at night in the rain-soaked cellars of old ramshackle tenements. with abandoned women in the last stages of the harlot's progress - women who had been kept by Chinamen and turned away at last to die. These are the lowest of classes, all people driven to insanity because of their poverty

Without other options, Jurgis makes the conscious choice to remain in Chicago and care for his child. Though work is difficult to find because he is blacklisted at the meat packing plant, Jurgis is able to obtain employment at two other factories -- the Harvester Trust and the Steel Mills. Jurgis's jobs at these places allow Sinclair to compare and contrast different methods of capitalism and to eventually show how each is a corruption of the other. The first place that Jurgis finds a job is with the Harvester Trust. This Trust is run by businessmen and philanthropists. Their factory creates farm machinery and is run in a way that makes life more humane for workers. Sinclair notes that the Harvester Trust is considered a jewel of American industrialism by the businessmen and philanthropists who own it. In a way, the Trust is a kind of propaganda for the large industrial interests of Chicago. The second place that Jurgis finds a job is in the steel mill. This place is no better in terms of safety or humanity than the meat packing plants. Ironically, Jurgis get this job through the help of a "settlement worker." During the Progressive Era, the settlement worker movement would employ young men and women from affluent society to move into the slums and ghettos of large industrial cities where they would volunteer their time to give back to the poor. Sinclair uses this irony to show how even the charity of the rich is inextricably tied to the power and wealth of industrial society. Although the settlement worker means only to help, this person has no way of helping Jurgis except by placing him in an industrial factory that enslaves and injures him. The jobs that Jurgis holds in these two industries helps Sinclair show how tangled the web of capitalism had become in the United States. Although Sinclair does not make the connection explicitly, his readers would have surely known about the connection between the Harvester Trust, the Steel Trust, and the Beef Trust. The Harvester Trust was actually majority-owned by the leaders of the other great monopolistic industries of the time . Each of these enterprises cut deals with the other to get labor and materials cheaper than would otherwise be available. For instance, the Steel Industry would provide materials for the Harvester Trust to make machines cheaply. The Harvester Trust could then sell these machines to the sugar or beef industry. More products would mean that more railroad tracks would need to be built, meaning more steel would need to be manufactured. The Beef Trust would profit as well. These webs of industry all happen many levels above the understanding of a common worker like Jurgis. All that he knows is that his job can disappear at any time. The death of little Antanas by drowning is another example of the ways in which characters have only the whim of nature to keep them alive or to kill them. Jurgis's life now takes a new direction. He attempts to find a new way of living outside of the city. In this way, Jurgis is surrendering himself to nature. When he returns to the country, however, he finds that nature is more kind to him here. While in the country, Jurgis is able to fend for himself. He is able to survive and to take advantage of the natural world around him to regain his strength, even if his motives are not always pure. The contrasts between farm life and city life suggest that in city life Sinclair sees a perversion of nature. The scene in which Jurgis becomes drunk and hires a prostitute is a scene establishing Jurgis's final loss of innocence. The reader is reminded of the Garden of Eden narrative once again. This loss of innocence means that Jurgis must leave the natural world that had sustained him and return to the depraved world of the city. The final scene of Chapter Twenty Three in which Jurgis attends a revival is Sinclair's criticism of organized religion. Throughout the novel, Sinclair takes several different viewpoints on the value of religion. In this particular take, he portrays the evangelist preacher as being out of touch with the real needs of the people. The preacher offers the word of God, while the poor and hungry only want a warm place to stay. This inefficacy of religion means that Jurgis feels no shame or guilt when he begins to fall in with the criminals and poorest of the poor who use trickery and deceit to steal what they can.

He starts walking the rounds at the mills and factories looking for a job. He finds a job ad in the paper and applies even though he thinks it's probably some kind of scam. The man taking names at this place asks Jurgis if he has ever worked in Chicago. Jurgis lies and says he's from Kansas City. He doesn't want to be saddled by his old life. The job all takes place underground: Jurgis is digging the new Chicago subway system. By the way, this system has never really taken off and most of Chicago's public transit trains are above ground . This public transit system is the result of some kind backstage wheeling and dealing between a bunch of different big Chicago companies and none of the work is being done by unionized labor. Still, Jurgis doesn't care. He's just happy that he's involved with a new tunnel so the work should be steady for the whole winter. Jurgis rents a room in a nearby tenement and starts to settle down. However, Jurgis also starts up another old habit: he hangs out at the local bars for much of the evening to escape the cold weather. Building underground tunnels is extremely dangerous work, as Jurgis discovers up close and personal . Jurgis is walking out of work one night when a loaded railway car zips around the tracks and knocks Jurgis into the concrete wall of the tunnel. He wakes up in the hospital with a badly broken arm. Jurgis has to leave the hospital after two weeks, but his arm is still weak and he can no longer work. He also has no more pay left. So, yet once more, Jurgis finds himself out on the streets in the middle of the Chicago winter. Jurgis goes from bar to bar trying to get warm, but he doesn't have enough money to buy drinks or settle in for an evening. Jurgis is desperately cold when he hears the sounds of a church service going on nearby. He goes in to the meeting to hear an evangelist preaching about sin. Jurgis isn't really interested in religion. He's just looking for shelter from the cold. Jurgis listens to this preacher and starts to feel resentful. Even though the preacher means well, he is comfortable and warm. He's out of touch with the real suffering that he pretends to address with his religion. Jurgis has a few dimes left, so he finally goes off to his lodging house for a bed to sleep in. He can't really afford this, but it is so cold that he would freeze to death if he didn't. The only way Jurgis can make any money at all is by begging. Since he's fresh out of the hospital and pathetic-looking, Jurgis should make a mint. He's up against professional beggars, though, who use makeup to make themselves appear worse off than they are. Some of his fellow beggars are also really, really badly off - much more desperate even than poor Jurgis. So, Jurgis doesn't really stand out among the crowd.

After spending the summer as a hobo, Jurgis returns to Chicago in the fall. He finds work digging tunnels for telephone lines; in actuality, he is digging tunnels for freight trains. Jurgis breaks his arm after only a few weeks on the job and must spend two weeks in the hospital. After he is released from the hospital, Jurgis once again is out on the street in the middle of winter with no means of survival. When his money runs out, he is forced to become a beggar, but he does not do well.

Jurgis returns to Chicago a smarter man. Without hesitation, he lies to the foreman, claiming to be from Kansas City. Soon he spends his time working underground during the day and visiting saloons at night. True to form, his good luck doesn't last. And once again fate causes misfortune in his life; this time Jurgis breaks his arm. Again it is Christmastime, and spending the holiday alone in a hospital bed is ironically Jurgis' best Christmas in America. Only after he is released from the hospital does the reality of his situation hit him, and soon he is destitute once more. As Jurgis roams the streets as a beggar, he becomes class conscious for the first time in his life. He also begins to become suspicious of religion. Jurgis astutely wonders what the evangelists really know about sin and suffering, realizing that the poor come to meetings only to have shelter from the cold. Glossary camaraderie loyalty and a warm, friendly feeling among comrades. vice evil or wicked conduct or behavior; depravity or corruption. mendicant person who begs for money, food, clothes, etc., given to the poor. harlot prostitute.

Jurgis returns to Chicago in the fall because the cold weather is upon him. He finds a job digging underground tunnels for railway freight. The purpose of the tunnels is to break the power of the teamster's union, though Jurgis remains unaware of this goal for a year. Confident that the job will last all winter, he spends his money on alcohol with abandon. Unfortunately, however, he suffers an accident and breaks his arm. He spends Christmas in the hospital. After two weeks, he is ushered out of the hospital, to his dismay. It is the dead of winter. He attends a religious revival with other bums just to stay warm. He despises the men preaching at the revival since he feels that they have no right to talk about saving souls when men like him only need a "decent existence for their bodies