But a big man cannot stay drunk very long on three dollars. That was
Sunday morning, and Monday night Jurgis came home, sober and sick,
realizing that he had spent every cent the family owned, and had not
bought a single instant's forgetfulness with it.

Ona was not yet buried; but the police had been notified, and on the
morrow they would put the body in a pine coffin and take it to the
potter's field. Elzbieta was out begging now, a few pennies from each of
the neighbors, to get enough to pay for a mass for her; and the children
were upstairs starving to death, while he, good-for-nothing rascal, had
been spending their money on drink. So spoke Aniele, scornfully, and
when he started toward the fire she added the information that her
kitchen was no longer for him to fill with his phosphate stinks. She
had crowded all her boarders into one room on Ona's account, but now he
could go up in the garret where he belonged--and not there much longer,
either, if he did not pay her some rent.

Jurgis went without a word, and, stepping over half a dozen sleeping
boarders in the next room, ascended the ladder. It was dark up above;
they could not afford any light; also it was nearly as cold as outdoors.
In a corner, as far away from the corpse as possible, sat Marija,
holding little Antanas in her one good arm and trying to soothe him to
sleep. In another corner crouched poor little Juozapas, wailing because
he had had nothing to eat all day. Marija said not a word to Jurgis; he
crept in like a whipped cur, and went and sat down by the body.

Perhaps he ought to have meditated upon the hunger of the children, and
upon his own baseness; but he thought only of Ona, he gave himself up
again to the luxury of grief. He shed no tears, being ashamed to make a
sound; he sat motionless and shuddering with his anguish. He had never
dreamed how much he loved Ona, until now that she was gone; until now
that he sat here, knowing that on the morrow they would take her away,
and that he would never lay eyes upon her again--never all the days
of his life. His old love, which had been starved to death, beaten to
death, awoke in him again; the floodgates of memory were lifted--he saw
all their life together, saw her as he had seen her in Lithuania, the
first day at the fair, beautiful as the flowers, singing like a bird. He
saw her as he had married her, with all her tenderness, with her heart
of wonder; the very words she had spoken seemed to ring now in his ears,
the tears she had shed to be wet upon his cheek. The long, cruel battle
with misery and hunger had hardened and embittered him, but it had not
changed her--she had been the same hungry soul to the end, stretching
out her arms to him, pleading with him, begging him for love and
tenderness. And she had suffered--so cruelly she had suffered, such
agonies, such infamies--ah, God, the memory of them was not to be borne.
What a monster of wickedness, of heartlessness, he had been! Every angry
word that he had ever spoken came back to him and cut him like a knife;
every selfish act that he had done--with what torments he paid for them
now! And such devotion and awe as welled up in his soul--now that it
could never be spoken, now that it was too late, too late! His bosom-was
choking with it, bursting with it; he crouched here in the darkness
beside her, stretching out his arms to her--and she was gone forever,
she was dead! He could have screamed aloud with the horror and despair
of it; a sweat of agony beaded his forehead, yet he dared not make a
sound--he scarcely dared to breathe, because of his shame and loathing
of himself.

Late at night came Elzbieta, having gotten the money for a mass, and
paid for it in advance, lest she should be tempted too sorely at home.
She brought also a bit of stale rye bread that some one had given her,
and with that they quieted the children and got them to sleep. Then she
came over to Jurgis and sat down beside him.

She said not a word of reproach--she and Marija had chosen that course
before; she would only plead with him, here by the corpse of his dead
wife. Already Elzbieta had choked down her tears, grief being crowded
out of her soul by fear. She had to bury one of her children--but then
she had done it three times before, and each time risen up and gone back
to take up the battle for the rest. Elzbieta was one of the primitive
creatures: like the angleworm, which goes on living though cut in half;
like a hen, which, deprived of her chickens one by one, will mother the
last that is left her. She did this because it was her nature--she asked
no questions about the justice of it, nor the worth-whileness of life in
which destruction and death ran riot.

And this old common-sense view she labored to impress upon Jurgis,
pleading with him with tears in her eyes. Ona was dead, but the others
were left and they must be saved. She did not ask for her own children.
She and Marija could care for them somehow, but there was Antanas, his
own son. Ona had given Antanas to him--the little fellow was the only
remembrance of her that he had; he must treasure it and protect it, he
must show himself a man. He knew what Ona would have had him do, what
she would ask of him at this moment, if she could speak to him. It was
a terrible thing that she should have died as she had; but the life had
been too hard for her, and she had to go. It was terrible that they
were not able to bury her, that he could not even have a day to mourn
her--but so it was. Their fate was pressing; they had not a cent, and
the children would perish--some money must be had. Could he not be a man
for Ona's sake, and pull himself together? In a little while they would
be out of danger--now that they had given up the house they could live
more cheaply, and with all the children working they could get along,
if only he would not go to pieces. So Elzbieta went on, with feverish
intensity. It was a struggle for life with her; she was not afraid that
Jurgis would go on drinking, for he had no money for that, but she was
wild with dread at the thought that he might desert them, might take to
the road, as Jonas had done.

But with Ona's dead body beneath his eyes, Jurgis could not well think
of treason to his child. Yes, he said, he would try, for the sake of
Antanas. He would give the little fellow his chance--would get to work
at once, yes, tomorrow, without even waiting for Ona to be buried. They
might trust him, he would keep his word, come what might.

And so he was out before daylight the next morning, headache, heartache,
and all. He went straight to Graham's fertilizer mill, to see if he
could get back his job. But the boss shook his head when he saw him--no,
his place had been filled long ago, and there was no room for him.

"Do you think there will be?" Jurgis asked. "I may have to wait."

"No," said the other, "it will not be worth your while to wait--there
will be nothing for you here."

Jurgis stood gazing at him in perplexity. "What is the matter?" he
asked. "Didn't I do my work?"

The other met his look with one of cold indifference, and answered,
"There will be nothing for you here, I said."

Jurgis had his suspicions as to the dreadful meaning of that incident,
and he went away with a sinking at the heart. He went and took his stand
with the mob of hungry wretches who were standing about in the snow
before the time station. Here he stayed, breakfastless, for two hours,
until the throng was driven away by the clubs of the police. There was
no work for him that day.

Jurgis had made a good many acquaintances in his long services at the
yards--there were saloon-keepers who would trust him for a drink and a
sandwich, and members of his old union who would lend him a dime at a
pinch. It was not a question of life and death for him, therefore; he
might hunt all day, and come again on the morrow, and try hanging on
thus for weeks, like hundreds and thousands of others. Meantime, Teta
Elzbieta would go and beg, over in the Hyde Park district, and the
children would bring home enough to pacify Aniele, and keep them all
alive.

It was at the end of a week of this sort of waiting, roaming about in
the bitter winds or loafing in saloons, that Jurgis stumbled on a chance
in one of the cellars of Jones's big packing plant. He saw a foreman
passing the open doorway, and hailed him for a job.

"Push a truck?" inquired the man, and Jurgis answered, "Yes, sir!"
before the words were well out of his mouth.

"What's your name?" demanded the other.

"Jurgis Rudkus."

"Worked in the yards before?"

"Yes."

"Whereabouts?"

"Two places--Brown's killing beds and Durham's fertilizer mill."

"Why did you leave there?"

"The first time I had an accident, and the last time I was sent up for a
month."

"I see. Well, I'll give you a trial. Come early tomorrow and ask for Mr.
Thomas."

So Jurgis rushed home with the wild tidings that he had a job--that
the terrible siege was over. The remnants of the family had quite a
celebration that night; and in the morning Jurgis was at the place
half an hour before the time of opening. The foreman came in shortly
afterward, and when he saw Jurgis he frowned.

"Oh," he said, "I promised you a job, didn't I?"

"Yes, sir," said Jurgis.

"Well, I'm sorry, but I made a mistake. I can't use you."

Jurgis stared, dumfounded. "What's the matter?" he gasped.

"Nothing," said the man, "only I can't use you."

There was the same cold, hostile stare that he had had from the boss of
the fertilizer mill. He knew that there was no use in saying a word, and
he turned and went away.

Out in the saloons the men could tell him all about the meaning of it;
they gazed at him with pitying eyes--poor devil, he was blacklisted!
What had he done? they asked--knocked down his boss? Good heavens, then
he might have known! Why, he stood as much chance of getting a job in
Packingtown as of being chosen mayor of Chicago. Why had he wasted his
time hunting? They had him on a secret list in every office, big and
little, in the place. They had his name by this time in St. Louis and
New York, in Omaha and Boston, in Kansas City and St. Joseph. He was
condemned and sentenced, without trial and without appeal; he could
never work for the packers again--he could not even clean cattle pens or
drive a truck in any place where they controlled. He might try it, if he
chose, as hundreds had tried it, and found out for themselves. He
would never be told anything about it; he would never get any more
satisfaction than he had gotten just now; but he would always find when
the time came that he was not needed. It would not do for him to give
any other name, either--they had company "spotters" for just that
purpose, and he wouldn't keep a job in Packingtown three days. It was
worth a fortune to the packers to keep their blacklist effective, as
a warning to the men and a means of keeping down union agitation and
political discontent.

Jurgis went home, carrying these new tidings to the family council. It
was a most cruel thing; here in this district was his home, such as it
was, the place he was used to and the friends he knew--and now every
possibility of employment in it was closed to him. There was nothing in
Packingtown but packing houses; and so it was the same thing as evicting
him from his home.

He and the two women spent all day and half the night discussing it. It
would be convenient, downtown, to the children's place of work; but then
Marija was on the road to recovery, and had hopes of getting a job in
the yards; and though she did not see her old-time lover once a month,
because of the misery of their state, yet she could not make up her
mind to go away and give him up forever. Then, too, Elzbieta had heard
something about a chance to scrub floors in Durham's offices and was
waiting every day for word. In the end it was decided that Jurgis should
go downtown to strike out for himself, and they would decide after he
got a job. As there was no one from whom he could borrow there, and he
dared not beg for fear of being arrested, it was arranged that every day
he should meet one of the children and be given fifteen cents of their
earnings, upon which he could keep going. Then all day he was to pace
the streets with hundreds and thousands of other homeless wretches
inquiring at stores, warehouses, and factories for a chance; and at
night he was to crawl into some doorway or underneath a truck, and hide
there until midnight, when he might get into one of the station houses,
and spread a newspaper upon the floor, and lie down in the midst of
a throng of "bums" and beggars, reeking with alcohol and tobacco, and
filthy with vermin and disease.

So for two weeks more Jurgis fought with the demon of despair. Once he
got a chance to load a truck for half a day, and again he carried an old
woman's valise and was given a quarter. This let him into a lodging-house
on several nights when he might otherwise have frozen to death; and it
also gave him a chance now and then to buy a newspaper in the morning
and hunt up jobs while his rivals were watching and waiting for a
paper to be thrown away. This, however, was really not the advantage it
seemed, for the newspaper advertisements were a cause of much loss of
precious time and of many weary journeys. A full half of these were
"fakes," put in by the endless variety of establishments which preyed
upon the helpless ignorance of the unemployed. If Jurgis lost only
his time, it was because he had nothing else to lose; whenever a
smooth-tongued agent would tell him of the wonderful positions he had on
hand, he could only shake his head sorrowfully and say that he had not
the necessary dollar to deposit; when it was explained to him what "big
money" he and all his family could make by coloring photographs, he
could only promise to come in again when he had two dollars to invest in
the outfit.

In the end Jurgis got a chance through an accidental meeting with an
old-time acquaintance of his union days. He met this man on his way to
work in the giant factories of the Harvester Trust; and his friend told
him to come along and he would speak a good word for him to his boss,
whom he knew well. So Jurgis trudged four or five miles, and passed
through a waiting throng of unemployed at the gate under the escort
of his friend. His knees nearly gave way beneath him when the foreman,
after looking him over and questioning him, told him that he could find
an opening for him.

How much this accident meant to Jurgis he realized only by stages;
for he found that the harvester works were the sort of place to which
philanthropists and reformers pointed with pride. It had some thought
for its employees; its workshops were big and roomy, it provided a
restaurant where the workmen could buy good food at cost, it had even
a reading room, and decent places where its girl-hands could rest; also
the work was free from many of the elements of filth and repulsiveness
that prevailed at the stockyards. Day after day Jurgis discovered these
things--things never expected nor dreamed of by him--until this new
place came to seem a kind of a heaven to him.

It was an enormous establishment, covering a hundred and sixty acres
of ground, employing five thousand people, and turning out over three
hundred thousand machines every year--a good part of all the harvesting
and mowing machines used in the country. Jurgis saw very little of it,
of course--it was all specialized work, the same as at the stockyards;
each one of the hundreds of parts of a mowing machine was made
separately, and sometimes handled by hundreds of men. Where Jurgis
worked there was a machine which cut and stamped a certain piece of
steel about two square inches in size; the pieces came tumbling out upon
a tray, and all that human hands had to do was to pile them in regular
rows, and change the trays at intervals. This was done by a single boy,
who stood with eyes and thought centered upon it, and fingers flying so
fast that the sounds of the bits of steel striking upon each other was
like the music of an express train as one hears it in a sleeping car at
night. This was "piece-work," of course; and besides it was made certain
that the boy did not idle, by setting the machine to match the highest
possible speed of human hands. Thirty thousand of these pieces he
handled every day, nine or ten million every year--how many in a
lifetime it rested with the gods to say. Near by him men sat bending
over whirling grindstones, putting the finishing touches to the steel
knives of the reaper; picking them out of a basket with the right hand,
pressing first one side and then the other against the stone and finally
dropping them with the left hand into another basket. One of these men
told Jurgis that he had sharpened three thousand pieces of steel a day
for thirteen years. In the next room were wonderful machines that ate
up long steel rods by slow stages, cutting them off, seizing the pieces,
stamping heads upon them, grinding them and polishing them, threading
them, and finally dropping them into a basket, all ready to bolt the
harvesters together. From yet another machine came tens of thousands of
steel burs to fit upon these bolts. In other places all these various
parts were dipped into troughs of paint and hung up to dry, and then
slid along on trolleys to a room where men streaked them with red and
yellow, so that they might look cheerful in the harvest fields.

Jurgis's friend worked upstairs in the casting rooms, and his task was
to make the molds of a certain part. He shoveled black sand into an
iron receptacle and pounded it tight and set it aside to harden; then it
would be taken out, and molten iron poured into it. This man, too, was
paid by the mold--or rather for perfect castings, nearly half his
work going for naught. You might see him, along with dozens of others,
toiling like one possessed by a whole community of demons; his arms
working like the driving rods of an engine, his long, black hair flying
wild, his eyes starting out, the sweat rolling in rivers down his face.
When he had shoveled the mold full of sand, and reached for the pounder
to pound it with, it was after the manner of a canoeist running rapids
and seizing a pole at sight of a submerged rock. All day long this man
would toil thus, his whole being centered upon the purpose of making
twenty-three instead of twenty-two and a half cents an hour; and then
his product would be reckoned up by the census taker, and jubilant
captains of industry would boast of it in their banquet halls, telling
how our workers are nearly twice as efficient as those of any other
country. If we are the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon, it would
seem to be mainly because we have been able to goad our wage-earners to
this pitch of frenzy; though there are a few other things that are great
among us including our drink-bill, which is a billion and a quarter of
dollars a year, and doubling itself every decade.

There was a machine which stamped out the iron plates, and then another
which, with a mighty thud, mashed them to the shape of the sitting-down
portion of the American farmer. Then they were piled upon a truck, and
it was Jurgis's task to wheel them to the room where the machines were
"assembled." This was child's play for him, and he got a dollar
and seventy-five cents a day for it; on Saturday he paid Aniele the
seventy-five cents a week he owed her for the use of her garret, and
also redeemed his overcoat, which Elzbieta had put in pawn when he was
in jail.

This last was a great blessing. A man cannot go about in midwinter in
Chicago with no overcoat and not pay for it, and Jurgis had to walk or
ride five or six miles back and forth to his work. It so happened that
half of this was in one direction and half in another, necessitating
a change of cars; the law required that transfers be given at all
intersecting points, but the railway corporation had gotten round this
by arranging a pretense at separate ownership. So whenever he wished
to ride, he had to pay ten cents each way, or over ten per cent of his
income to this power, which had gotten its franchises long ago by buying
up the city council, in the face of popular clamor amounting almost to a
rebellion. Tired as he felt at night, and dark and bitter cold as it
was in the morning, Jurgis generally chose to walk; at the hours other
workmen were traveling, the streetcar monopoly saw fit to put on so few
cars that there would be men hanging to every foot of the backs of them
and often crouching upon the snow-covered roof. Of course the doors
could never be closed, and so the cars were as cold as outdoors; Jurgis,
like many others, found it better to spend his fare for a drink and a
free lunch, to give him strength to walk.

These, however, were all slight matters to a man who had escaped from
Durham's fertilizer mill. Jurgis began to pick up heart again and to
make plans. He had lost his house but then the awful load of the rent
and interest was off his shoulders, and when Marija was well again they
could start over and save. In the shop where he worked was a man, a
Lithuanian like himself, whom the others spoke of in admiring whispers,
because of the mighty feats he was performing. All day he sat at a
machine turning bolts; and then in the evening he went to the public
school to study English and learn to read. In addition, because he had a
family of eight children to support and his earnings were not enough, on
Saturdays and Sundays he served as a watchman; he was required to press
two buttons at opposite ends of a building every five minutes, and
as the walk only took him two minutes, he had three minutes to study
between each trip. Jurgis felt jealous of this fellow; for that was
the sort of thing he himself had dreamed of, two or three years ago.
He might do it even yet, if he had a fair chance--he might attract
attention and become a skilled man or a boss, as some had done in this
place. Suppose that Marija could get a job in the big mill where they
made binder twine--then they would move into this neighborhood, and he
would really have a chance. With a hope like that, there was some use
in living; to find a place where you were treated like a human being--by
God! he would show them how he could appreciate it. He laughed to
himself as he thought how he would hang on to this job!

And then one afternoon, the ninth of his work in the place, when he went
to get his overcoat he saw a group of men crowded before a placard on
the door, and when he went over and asked what it was, they told him
that beginning with the morrow his department of the harvester works
would be closed until further notice!

When Jurgis returns from his day of drinking, Aniele tells him that he cannot stay in her rooms because he smells so badly. She makes him go up to the attic and sleep. He feels a deep sorrow over Ona's death and cannot help but think of all the times that he was cruel to her and did not love her as she deserved. He feels shame and loathing and wishes that he could have her back. Elzbieta begs with him to stay and care for his son for she is worried that he will leave as Jonas did. Jurgis feels a duty towards his boy and commits to staying and working to support him. He goes out the next day and begins to look for work. He goes back to the fertilizer plant but is told that there is no job for him. When Jurgis asks if he can wait for a job, the foreman tells him that there will be no job for him there in the future either. He finds a foreman in one of the packinghouses that offers him a job pushing a truck, but when Jurgis returns the next day to start work, the foreman tells him that he was mistaken and that there is no work after all. When Jurgis goes to the saloons he finds out that he is on the blacklist and that he will not be able to find work in packing houses all across the country. He was condemned and sentenced, without trial and without appeal; he could never work for the packers again. Jurgis, Elzbieta, and Marija decide that it will be best for him to go downtown and beg for work there where no one knows him. For two weeks, he struggles to find work and to survive. He gets a few odd jobs and this lets him find a place to sleep indoors for a night. He tries to read the classifieds in the paper to find jobs, but most of them are scams. One day he accidentally meets a friend, who tells him there might be work for him at one of the giant factories of the Harvester Trust. The Harvester Trust is a joint effort of businessmen and philanthropists. It provides safer and cleaner workshops. There is a restaurant where men can buy good food, and it pays decent wages with a lower speed of work. The place becomes a "kind of heaven" to Jurgis and he feels as though he has a chance to once again be treated like a human being. One of the other workers, a strong Lithuanian man just as Jurgis had been in his younger days, works to support eight children and also works on weekends while studying English. Jurgis feels that he might have a chance to be that kind of man again and that he might one day rise in standing and stature. The factory produces harvesting machinery for farmers. One man stamps the machinery while another forms the molds for the steel. The work is never too fast for men to handle, and they are paid based on how many pieces of machinery they can produce in a day. Philanthropists boast that this kind of workplace demonstrates that America is the "greatest nation the sun ever shone upon" because "we have been able to goad our wage-earners to this pitch of frenzy" in manufacturing products. Though Jurgis still has to walk five or six miles every day to work, or else pay ten percent of his wages to the trolley cars, he is making a decent wage and feels as though he can provide for what is left of his family. He can even afford an overcoat now. One day Jurgis shows up for work, however, and finds a sign on the door that states that his department of the harvester works will be closed until further notice

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.

Jurgis sobers up and goes home. Ona is going to be buried the next day in Chicago's "potter's field," a public cemetery for people too poor to afford their own burial plot. Teta Elzbieta is begging around the neighborhood for money to give Ona a proper Catholic funeral mass. Mrs. Jukniene scolds Jurgis for going out and spending the last of their money while they owe rent and the children are all starving. In the attic room, Marija is sitting holding Antanas, and Juozapas Lukoszaite is crying with hunger. Jurgis sits thinking of Ona and how much he loves her. Teta Elzbieta comes home. She has gotten the money for Ona's mass. Teta Elzbieta sits next to Jurgis and pleads with him. She begs Jurgis to pull himself together, get a job, and help the family. Teta Elzbieta is afraid that Jurgis will abandon his family now, as Jonas had done. Jurgis agrees to try, for his son's sake. So the next morning, Jurgis goes out to his fertilizer plant. Yet there is no job waiting for him there. Jurgis tries at place after place to find a job. Meanwhile, Elzbieta is still feeding her children with the money that she has been begging for in Chicago's Hyde Park. Eventually, Jurgis lucks out. He thinks he's found a job at Jones's meatpacking plant pushing carts. Jurgis appears the next morning to start work under the foreman he spoke to the day before. The foreman apologizes: he's made a mistake. He can't use Jurgis. Jurgis's friends at one of the bars explain to him that he has been blacklisted. After beating the stuffing out of a boss in the yards, does Jurgis really think anyone at the meatpacking plants will hire him again? He's got no chance for another job at Packingtown. He, Teta Elzbieta, and Marija discuss the possibility of moving. Moving would bring them closer to the children's workplace. But Marija's hand is feeling better, and she wants to try and find a meatpacking job. What's more, Marija can't quite bring herself to abandon Tamoszius Kuszleika, even though she only sees him about once a month nowadays. Teta Elzbieta also thinks she might be able to get a job cleaning at Durham's offices. So the family decides that Jurgis should go downtown by himself to look for work and then they can decide. Jurgis goes downtown, homeless and alone. He begs and gets small jobs here and there, but he doesn't find solid work for two weeks. Finally, Jurgis gets a position thanks to a union friend of his. This friend points Jurgis in the direction of a well-meaning, enlightened factory that makes farm implements. This place is called Harvester Trust, and it pays good money. It also has airy, nice workshops, and even a reading room. Even if Harvester Trust seems well-meaning, it's still a factory with an assembly line and lots of big machines. The work is boring and repetitive, and the company employs child workers. Even so, Jurgis is making money again - he has enough to pay his rent and to pick up his coat from the pawn shop. Jurgis wants to start over and to save money for his family now that the interest from the house is no longer draining him dry. Jurgis starts to have hope again. Then, of course, Jurgis is ruined again: when he goes to Harvester Trust for work, he finds that the company has been shut down until further notice.

Unable to remain drunk very long on the pittance he has, Jurgis returns to the widow's to find out that Elzbieta has begged enough money to pay for a funeral mass for Ona. Elzbieta uses baby Antanas as leverage as she encourages Jurgis to find a job, but he is refused a job even at the fertilizer plant. Finally he is offered a job, but when he reports for work, the boss tells him that he cannot use him. Jurgis is blacklisted. After weeks of unemployment, a chance meeting with a former union associate leads Jurgis to a job in the harvester works. Jurgis is heartened by his new job and begins to make plans for the future, only to be laid off ten days later.

With Ona's death, the only thing Jurgis lives for is his son, Antanas. True to his character, Jurgis diligently looks for gainful employment. Recognizing his responsibilities as a father, he even returns to the fertilizer plant, but to no avail. More potential workers exist in Packingtown than do jobs; therefore, packers have the ability to blacklist perceived troublemakers. This is another way the owners exercise power over the laborers. Getting a job outside the city seems to be an ideal situation, because working conditions are better there. Working as a harvester seems better than working in a factory. But work as a harvester is seasonal. When Jurgis is laid off, he realizes he is still at the whim of a capitalistic system that does not care for its employees, only its profits. Glossary cur a dog of mixed breed; a mongrel. angleworm an earthworm: so called because it is used for fishing bait. treason betrayal of trust or faith. blacklist a list of persons who have been censured and who are being discriminated against or refused employment. valise a piece of hand luggage. philanthropist a person, especially a wealthy one, who is interested in the general human welfare, especially as shown in large-scale gifts to charities. monopoly exclusive control of a commodity or service in a given market, or control that makes possible the fixing of prices and the virtual elimination of free competition.

When Jurgis is sober, Teta Elzbieta begs him to remember Antanas. Jurgis rouses himself to look for work for his son's sake if nothing else. But he soon learns that he is blacklisted in Packingtown. Phil Connor has made certain that he will never find another job there. Marija's hand will soon be healed enough for her to return to work, however, and Teta Elzbieta has a lead on a job scrubbing floors. After two weeks of futile searching and odd jobs, Jurgis meets an old acquaintance from his union. The man leads him to a factory where harvesting machines are produced, and the foreman gives Jurgis a job. The working conditions are much better, and the factory is a paragon of philanthropy and goodwill. Nevertheless, workers still must keep up a breakneck speed. Jurgis regains hope and begins to make plans, even studying English at night. Several days later, however, a placard at the factory informs the men who work there that Jurgis's department will be closed until further notice


That was the way they did it! There was not half an hour's warning--the
works were closed! It had happened that way before, said the men, and it
would happen that way forever. They had made all the harvesting machines
that the world needed, and now they had to wait till some wore out! It
was nobody's fault--that was the way of it; and thousands of men and
women were turned out in the dead of winter, to live upon their savings
if they had any, and otherwise to die. So many tens of thousands already
in the city, homeless and begging for work, and now several thousand
more added to them!

Jurgis walked home-with his pittance of pay in his pocket, heartbroken,
overwhelmed. One more bandage had been torn from his eyes, one more
pitfall was revealed to him! Of what help was kindness and decency on
the part of employers--when they could not keep a job for him, when
there were more harvesting machines made than the world was able to buy!
What a hellish mockery it was, anyway, that a man should slave to make
harvesting machines for the country, only to be turned out to starve for
doing his duty too well!

It took him two days to get over this heart-sickening disappointment. He
did not drink anything, because Elzbieta got his money for safekeeping,
and knew him too well to be in the least frightened by his angry
demands. He stayed up in the garret however, and sulked--what was the
use of a man's hunting a job when it was taken from him before he had
time to learn the work? But then their money was going again, and little
Antanas was hungry, and crying with the bitter cold of the garret. Also
Madame Haupt, the midwife, was after him for some money. So he went out
once more.

For another ten days he roamed the streets and alleys of the huge city,
sick and hungry, begging for any work. He tried in stores and offices,
in restaurants and hotels, along the docks and in the railroad yards, in
warehouses and mills and factories where they made products that went
to every corner of the world. There were often one or two chances--but
there were always a hundred men for every chance, and his turn would not
come. At night he crept into sheds and cellars and doorways--until there
came a spell of belated winter weather, with a raging gale, and the
thermometer five degrees below zero at sundown and falling all night.
Then Jurgis fought like a wild beast to get into the big Harrison Street
police station, and slept down in a corridor, crowded with two other men
upon a single step.

He had to fight often in these days to fight for a place near the
factory gates, and now and again with gangs on the street. He found, for
instance, that the business of carrying satchels for railroad passengers
was a pre-empted one--whenever he essayed it, eight or ten men and boys
would fall upon him and force him to run for his life. They always
had the policeman "squared," and so there was no use in expecting
protection.

That Jurgis did not starve to death was due solely to the pittance the
children brought him. And even this was never certain. For one thing the
cold was almost more than the children could bear; and then they, too,
were in perpetual peril from rivals who plundered and beat them. The law
was against them, too--little Vilimas, who was really eleven, but did
not look to be eight, was stopped on the streets by a severe old lady in
spectacles, who told him that he was too young to be working and that
if he did not stop selling papers she would send a truant officer after
him. Also one night a strange man caught little Kotrina by the arm and
tried to persuade her into a dark cellar-way, an experience which filled
her with such terror that she was hardly to be kept at work.

At last, on a Sunday, as there was no use looking for work, Jurgis went
home by stealing rides on the cars. He found that they had been waiting
for him for three days--there was a chance of a job for him.

It was quite a story. Little Juozapas, who was near crazy with hunger
these days, had gone out on the street to beg for himself. Juozapas had
only one leg, having been run over by a wagon when a little child,
but he had got himself a broomstick, which he put under his arm for a
crutch. He had fallen in with some other children and found the way to
Mike Scully's dump, which lay three or four blocks away. To this place
there came every day many hundreds of wagon-loads of garbage and trash
from the lake front, where the rich people lived; and in the heaps the
children raked for food--there were hunks of bread and potato peelings
and apple cores and meat bones, all of it half frozen and quite
unspoiled. Little Juozapas gorged himself, and came home with a
newspaper full, which he was feeding to Antanas when his mother came in.
Elzbieta was horrified, for she did not believe that the food out of the
dumps was fit to eat. The next day, however, when no harm came of it and
Juozapas began to cry with hunger, she gave in and said that he might go
again. And that afternoon he came home with a story of how while he had
been digging away with a stick, a lady upon the street had called him.
A real fine lady, the little boy explained, a beautiful lady; and
she wanted to know all about him, and whether he got the garbage for
chickens, and why he walked with a broomstick, and why Ona had died, and
how Jurgis had come to go to jail, and what was the matter with Marija,
and everything. In the end she had asked where he lived, and said that
she was coming to see him, and bring him a new crutch to walk with. She
had on a hat with a bird upon it, Juozapas added, and a long fur snake
around her neck.

She really came, the very next morning, and climbed the ladder to the
garret, and stood and stared about her, turning pale at the sight of
the blood stains on the floor where Ona had died. She was a "settlement
worker," she explained to Elzbieta--she lived around on Ashland Avenue.
Elzbieta knew the place, over a feed store; somebody had wanted her to
go there, but she had not cared to, for she thought that it must have
something to do with religion, and the priest did not like her to have
anything to do with strange religions. They were rich people who came
to live there to find out about the poor people; but what good they
expected it would do them to know, one could not imagine. So spoke
Elzbieta, naively, and the young lady laughed and was rather at a loss
for an answer--she stood and gazed about her, and thought of a cynical
remark that had been made to her, that she was standing upon the brink
of the pit of hell and throwing in snowballs to lower the temperature.

Elzbieta was glad to have somebody to listen, and she told all their
woes--what had happened to Ona, and the jail, and the loss of their
home, and Marija's accident, and how Ona had died, and how Jurgis could
get no work. As she listened the pretty young lady's eyes filled with
tears, and in the midst of it she burst into weeping and hid her face on
Elzbieta's shoulder, quite regardless of the fact that the woman had on
a dirty old wrapper and that the garret was full of fleas. Poor Elzbieta
was ashamed of herself for having told so woeful a tale, and the other
had to beg and plead with her to get her to go on. The end of it was
that the young lady sent them a basket of things to eat, and left a
letter that Jurgis was to take to a gentleman who was superintendent in
one of the mills of the great steelworks in South Chicago. "He will get
Jurgis something to do," the young lady had said, and added, smiling
through her tears--"If he doesn't, he will never marry me."

The steel-works were fifteen miles away, and as usual it was so
contrived that one had to pay two fares to get there. Far and wide the
sky was flaring with the red glare that leaped from rows of towering
chimneys--for it was pitch dark when Jurgis arrived. The vast works, a
city in themselves, were surrounded by a stockade; and already a full
hundred men were waiting at the gate where new hands were taken on. Soon
after daybreak whistles began to blow, and then suddenly thousands of
men appeared, streaming from saloons and boardinghouses across the way,
leaping from trolley cars that passed--it seemed as if they rose out of
the ground, in the dim gray light. A river of them poured in through the
gate--and then gradually ebbed away again, until there were only a few
late ones running, and the watchman pacing up and down, and the hungry
strangers stamping and shivering.

Jurgis presented his precious letter. The gatekeeper was surly, and put
him through a catechism, but he insisted that he knew nothing, and as he
had taken the precaution to seal his letter, there was nothing for the
gatekeeper to do but send it to the person to whom it was addressed.
A messenger came back to say that Jurgis should wait, and so he came
inside of the gate, perhaps not sorry enough that there were others less
fortunate watching him with greedy eyes. The great mills were getting
under way--one could hear a vast stirring, a rolling and rumbling
and hammering. Little by little the scene grew plain: towering, black
buildings here and there, long rows of shops and sheds, little railways
branching everywhere, bare gray cinders underfoot and oceans of
billowing black smoke above. On one side of the grounds ran a railroad
with a dozen tracks, and on the other side lay the lake, where steamers
came to load.

Jurgis had time enough to stare and speculate, for it was two hours
before he was summoned. He went into the office building, where a
company timekeeper interviewed him. The superintendent was busy, he
said, but he (the timekeeper) would try to find Jurgis a job. He had
never worked in a steel mill before? But he was ready for anything?
Well, then, they would go and see.

So they began a tour, among sights that made Jurgis stare amazed. He
wondered if ever he could get used to working in a place like this,
where the air shook with deafening thunder, and whistles shrieked
warnings on all sides of him at once; where miniature steam engines came
rushing upon him, and sizzling, quivering, white-hot masses of metal
sped past him, and explosions of fire and flaming sparks dazzled him and
scorched his face. The men in these mills were all black with soot, and
hollow-eyed and gaunt; they worked with fierce intensity, rushing here
and there, and never lifting their eyes from their tasks. Jurgis clung
to his guide like a scared child to its nurse, and while the latter
hailed one foreman after another to ask if they could use another
unskilled man, he stared about him and marveled.

He was taken to the Bessemer furnace, where they made billets of
steel--a dome-like building, the size of a big theater. Jurgis stood
where the balcony of the theater would have been, and opposite, by the
stage, he saw three giant caldrons, big enough for all the devils of
hell to brew their broth in, full of something white and blinding,
bubbling and splashing, roaring as if volcanoes were blowing through
it--one had to shout to be heard in the place. Liquid fire would leap
from these caldrons and scatter like bombs below--and men were working
there, seeming careless, so that Jurgis caught his breath with fright.
Then a whistle would toot, and across the curtain of the theater would
come a little engine with a carload of something to be dumped into one
of the receptacles; and then another whistle would toot, down by
the stage, and another train would back up--and suddenly, without an
instant's warning, one of the giant kettles began to tilt and topple,
flinging out a jet of hissing, roaring flame. Jurgis shrank back
appalled, for he thought it was an accident; there fell a pillar of
white flame, dazzling as the sun, swishing like a huge tree falling in
the forest. A torrent of sparks swept all the way across the building,
overwhelming everything, hiding it from sight; and then Jurgis looked
through the fingers of his hands, and saw pouring out of the caldron a
cascade of living, leaping fire, white with a whiteness not of earth,
scorching the eyeballs. Incandescent rainbows shone above it, blue,
red, and golden lights played about it; but the stream itself was white,
ineffable. Out of regions of wonder it streamed, the very river of life;
and the soul leaped up at the sight of it, fled back upon it, swift and
resistless, back into far-off lands, where beauty and terror dwell. Then
the great caldron tilted back again, empty, and Jurgis saw to his relief
that no one was hurt, and turned and followed his guide out into the
sunlight.

They went through the blast furnaces, through rolling mills where bars
of steel were tossed about and chopped like bits of cheese. All around
and above giant machine arms were flying, giant wheels were turning,
great hammers crashing; traveling cranes creaked and groaned overhead,
reaching down iron hands and seizing iron prey--it was like standing in
the center of the earth, where the machinery of time was revolving.

By and by they came to the place where steel rails were made; and Jurgis
heard a toot behind him, and jumped out of the way of a car with a
white-hot ingot upon it, the size of a man's body. There was a sudden
crash and the car came to a halt, and the ingot toppled out upon
a moving platform, where steel fingers and arms seized hold of it,
punching it and prodding it into place, and hurrying it into the grip of
huge rollers. Then it came out upon the other side, and there were more
crashings and clatterings, and over it was flopped, like a pancake on
a gridiron, and seized again and rushed back at you through another
squeezer. So amid deafening uproar it clattered to and fro, growing
thinner and flatter and longer. The ingot seemed almost a living thing;
it did not want to run this mad course, but it was in the grip of fate,
it was tumbled on, screeching and clanking and shivering in protest. By
and by it was long and thin, a great red snake escaped from purgatory;
and then, as it slid through the rollers, you would have sworn that it
was alive--it writhed and squirmed, and wriggles and shudders passed out
through its tail, all but flinging it off by their violence. There was
no rest for it until it was cold and black--and then it needed only to
be cut and straightened to be ready for a railroad.

It was at the end of this rail's progress that Jurgis got his chance.
They had to be moved by men with crowbars, and the boss here could use
another man. So he took off his coat and set to work on the spot.

It took him two hours to get to this place every day and cost him a
dollar and twenty cents a week. As this was out of the question, he
wrapped his bedding in a bundle and took it with him, and one of his
fellow workingmen introduced him to a Polish lodging-house, where he
might have the privilege of sleeping upon the floor for ten cents a
night. He got his meals at free-lunch counters, and every Saturday night
he went home--bedding and all--and took the greater part of his money to
the family. Elzbieta was sorry for this arrangement, for she feared that
it would get him into the habit of living without them, and once a week
was not very often for him to see his baby; but there was no other way
of arranging it. There was no chance for a woman at the steelworks, and
Marija was now ready for work again, and lured on from day to day by the
hope of finding it at the yards.

In a week Jurgis got over his sense of helplessness and bewilderment
in the rail mill. He learned to find his way about and to take all the
miracles and terrors for granted, to work without hearing the rumbling
and crashing. From blind fear he went to the other extreme; he became
reckless and indifferent, like all the rest of the men, who took
but little thought of themselves in the ardor of their work. It was
wonderful, when one came to think of it, that these men should have
taken an interest in the work they did--they had no share in it--they
were paid by the hour, and paid no more for being interested. Also they
knew that if they were hurt they would be flung aside and forgotten--and
still they would hurry to their task by dangerous short cuts, would use
methods that were quicker and more effective in spite of the fact
that they were also risky. His fourth day at his work Jurgis saw a man
stumble while running in front of a car, and have his foot mashed off,
and before he had been there three weeks he was witness of a yet more
dreadful accident. There was a row of brick furnaces, shining white
through every crack with the molten steel inside. Some of these were
bulging dangerously, yet men worked before them, wearing blue glasses
when they opened and shut the doors. One morning as Jurgis was passing,
a furnace blew out, spraying two men with a shower of liquid fire. As
they lay screaming and rolling upon the ground in agony, Jurgis rushed
to help them, and as a result he lost a good part of the skin from the
inside of one of his hands. The company doctor bandaged it up, but he
got no other thanks from any one, and was laid up for eight working days
without any pay.

Most fortunately, at this juncture, Elzbieta got the long-awaited chance
to go at five o'clock in the morning and help scrub the office floors of
one of the packers. Jurgis came home and covered himself with blankets
to keep warm, and divided his time between sleeping and playing with
little Antanas. Juozapas was away raking in the dump a good part of the
time, and Elzbieta and Marija were hunting for more work.

Antanas was now over a year and a half old, and was a perfect talking
machine. He learned so fast that every week when Jurgis came home it
seemed to him as if he had a new child. He would sit down and listen and
stare at him, and give vent to delighted exclamations--"Palauk! Muma!
Tu mano szirdele!" The little fellow was now really the one delight
that Jurgis had in the world--his one hope, his one victory. Thank God,
Antanas was a boy! And he was as tough as a pine knot, and with the
appetite of a wolf. Nothing had hurt him, and nothing could hurt him;
he had come through all the suffering and deprivation unscathed--only
shriller-voiced and more determined in his grip upon life. He was a
terrible child to manage, was Antanas, but his father did not mind
that--he would watch him and smile to himself with satisfaction. The
more of a fighter he was the better--he would need to fight before he
got through.

Jurgis had got the habit of buying the Sunday paper whenever he had the
money; a most wonderful paper could be had for only five cents, a whole
armful, with all the news of the world set forth in big headlines, that
Jurgis could spell out slowly, with the children to help him at the long
words. There was battle and murder and sudden death--it was marvelous
how they ever heard about so many entertaining and thrilling happenings;
the stories must be all true, for surely no man could have made such
things up, and besides, there were pictures of them all, as real as
life. One of these papers was as good as a circus, and nearly as good
as a spree--certainly a most wonderful treat for a workingman, who was
tired out and stupefied, and had never had any education, and whose work
was one dull, sordid grind, day after day, and year after year, with
never a sight of a green field nor an hour's entertainment, nor anything
but liquor to stimulate his imagination. Among other things, these
papers had pages full of comical pictures, and these were the main joy
in life to little Antanas. He treasured them up, and would drag them out
and make his father tell him about them; there were all sorts of animals
among them, and Antanas could tell the names of all of them, lying
upon the floor for hours and pointing them out with his chubby little
fingers. Whenever the story was plain enough for Jurgis to make out,
Antanas would have it repeated to him, and then he would remember it,
prattling funny little sentences and mixing it up with other stories in
an irresistible fashion. Also his quaint pronunciation of words was
such a delight--and the phrases he would pick up and remember, the most
outlandish and impossible things! The first time that the little rascal
burst out with "God damn," his father nearly rolled off the chair
with glee; but in the end he was sorry for this, for Antanas was soon
"God-damning" everything and everybody.

And then, when he was able to use his hands, Jurgis took his bedding
again and went back to his task of shifting rails. It was now April, and
the snow had given place to cold rains, and the unpaved street in front
of Aniele's house was turned into a canal. Jurgis would have to wade
through it to get home, and if it was late he might easily get stuck to
his waist in the mire. But he did not mind this much--it was a promise
that summer was coming. Marija had now gotten a place as beef-trimmer
in one of the smaller packing plants; and he told himself that he had
learned his lesson now, and would meet with no more accidents--so that
at last there was prospect of an end to their long agony. They could
save money again, and when another winter came they would have a
comfortable place; and the children would be off the streets and in
school again, and they might set to work to nurse back into life their
habits of decency and kindness. So once more Jurgis began to make plans
and dream dreams.

And then one Saturday night he jumped off the car and started home, with
the sun shining low under the edge of a bank of clouds that had been
pouring floods of water into the mud-soaked street. There was a rainbow
in the sky, and another in his breast--for he had thirty-six hours' rest
before him, and a chance to see his family. Then suddenly he came in
sight of the house, and noticed that there was a crowd before the door.
He ran up the steps and pushed his way in, and saw Aniele's kitchen
crowded with excited women. It reminded him so vividly of the time when
he had come home from jail and found Ona dying, that his heart almost
stood still. "What's the matter?" he cried.

A dead silence had fallen in the room, and he saw that every one was
staring at him. "What's the matter?" he exclaimed again.

And then, up in the garret, he heard sounds of wailing, in Marija's
voice. He started for the ladder--and Aniele seized him by the arm. "No,
no!" she exclaimed. "Don't go up there!"

"What is it?" he shouted.

And the old woman answered him weakly: "It's Antanas. He's dead. He was
drowned out in the street!"

Jurgis is dismayed that he no longer has a job at the harvesting-machine plant. Other men tell him that the situation is no one's fault because "they had made all the harvesting-machines that the world needed, and now they had to wait till some wore out. Jurgis thinks that it is a "hellish mockery" that he should starve because he did his job too well. He goes home and, after two days, returns to the streets to beg for work. He begs for ten days while the family begins to run out of money again. One day, Little Juozapas goes to Mike Scully's garbage dump to scrounge for food. Because this is the dump where all the rich people send their trash, he finds a good deal of unspoiled food and returns home that night quite satiated. When he returns the next day, he meets a well-dressed woman who tells him to take her home with him. The woman tells Elzbieta that she is a "settlement-worker" and so Elzbieta begins to tell her the tale of their life in America. She tells the woman about all of their trials. The story is so sad that the woman begins to weep and makes Elzbieta continue until the whole story is told. When Elzbieta finishes the story, the woman gives her a letter and tells her to send Jurgis to the steel mills in South Chicago and that a man there will give him a job. The steel mills are fifteen miles away, so Jurgis must once again take two trains and pay two fares to get to work. When he arrives, he waits with hundreds of other men all looking for work. He gives his letter to one of the factory bosses and is then taken into the factory where a foreman begins to give him a tour of the mill. Jurgis is terrified of the place. There are loud noises and great cauldrons, "big enough for all the devils of hell to brew their broth in, full of something white and blinding, bubbling and splashing, roaring as if volcanoes were blowing through it. Jurgis watches an amazing process as steel is shaped and formed into rail ties. Jurgis obtains a job moving the steel rails with a crowbar. Instead of traveling the fifteen miles every day, Jurgis decides to sleep in a boarding house near the mill. After a week, he overcomes his fear of the place and begins to "take all the miracles and terrors" of the place for granted. There are still dangerous situations, however. One morning, as Jurgis passes by a furnace, the machine blows out spraying fire and melted steel over two men. Jurgis attempts to help them, but he only loses the skin on one of his hands by doing so. The doctor bandages him and he cannot work for eight days without pay. Nevertheless, in other ways, Jurgis's life is improving. His family begins to be able to pay off debts and start to save money once again. Jurgis's greatest joy is his son, Antanas, who is growing strong. The boy seems to learn how to talk more and more every time that Jurgis sees him. Every Sunday, Jurgis buys a five-cent paper, and Antanas takes great pleasure in the pages of cartoons and comics. Jurgis heals from his wound, picks up his bedding, and returns to the steel mill. One Saturday night, he takes the rail cars back to his home and enters the flat, where he sees a group of woman who become silent when he enters. This reminds him of the women that had gathered when Ona was dying. Jurgis demands to know what is going on. Aniele takes him by the arm and tells him that little Antanas is dead. He drowned in a flooded street

The factory closing is no individual person's fault; it's just a problem of supply and demand. They have made more harvesters than the farmers need, so production stops until there is a demand again. Jurgis feels even more despair: what does it matter if the employers are nice guys, if their business isn't thriving? Finally, Jurgis goes out to look for more work. Antanas is crying from hunger, and Madame Haupt is pressing Jurgis about her bill, so Jurgis needs to earn money ASAP. Jurgis spends many days fighting for a place outside the factory gates among the many other unemployed men. He manages to survive on the few pennies the kids bring him from their work in the city. The kids have had their own troubles. An old lady tells Vilimas she is going to report him for not going to school because he is too young to work on the streets . A guy grabs Kotrina by the arm and tries to drag her into a dark basement, which frightens her so much she can hardly stay at work. Finally, on Sunday, Jurgis goes back to Mrs. Jukniene's house to visit the family. It turns out that they may have found a job for him. What happened was this: Juozapas was run over by a wagon when he was a child and lost a leg. So he hasn't been able to leave the house very much. One day, though, using a broom as a crutch , Juozapas left the house and went over to the local dump. He combed through the trash for food, filled himself up, and then brought some home to Antanas. Teta Elzbieta comes home and hears what Juozapas has been eating. At first, she scolds him for eating dumpster food. But when he starts to cry again from hunger, Teta Elzbieta gives him permission to go dumpster diving again. When Juozapas next goes to the dump, a well-dressed young woman stops him and asks him all about his family life and background. She is a "settlement worker" - a person involved in community outreach in poor neighborhoods. She promises Juozapas to come and visit his family. She does: this well-dressed young woman shows up at Mrs. Jukniene's home the next day. She is horrified by the poor conditions they live in and by the blood stains still on the floor from Ona's painful last hours. Teta Elzbieta is glad to have someone to talk to, and she pours out all of their terrible experiences since coming to the States. The settlement worker cries in sympathy for Teta Elzbieta and her family. She promises Teta Elzbieta that, if Jurgis takes a letter from this woman to a certain superintendent at a steel factory in South Chicago, he will absolutely have to give Jurgis a job. Otherwise she, the settlement worker, will refuse to marry this superintendent. Jurgis makes his way to this steel factory. The steel factory is like nothing he has ever seen before: it's incredible noisy, and there is molten metal all over the place. What Jurgis is witnessing is the "Bessemer process," the earliest industrial system for mass-producing steel. There are sparks and furnaces and giant moving pieces of machinery everywhere that Jurgis looks. Jurgis manages to get a job moving the cooling steel rails from where they are poured to where they will be cut into shape. He has to rent a place to sleep in a nearby lodging house to save on commute money, even though it means he gets out of the habit of seeing his family. Jurgis sees several industrial accidents. The worst one is when he sees a couple of guys sprayed with liquid metal. He rushes to try and help them and burns his hand. He has to spend eight days off work recovering, and he fails to help anyone. Teta Elzbieta has finally found a job scrubbing floors for one of the packers. This leaves Marija hoping to find work, since her hand is better. Juozapas is still picking through the dump as often as he can. While Jurgis is home with his hand injury, he's left alone to bond with his son at last. Antanas is a year and a half old, very bright, and really active. Jurgis finds Antanas to be the only source of hope and pride left for him. Jurgis loves the fact that Antanas can't be disciplined. Antanas is strong-willed and never listens to what anyone tells him, which is the kind of spirit you need to survive this rough and tumble world. Antanas enjoys looking at the Sunday newspapers with Jurgis. Antanas starts learning to say random things he hears - including his favorite phrase, "God damn!" . Jurgis's hands get better, and he goes back to the steel plant. Marija has also gotten a job as a beef trimmer in a smaller packing plant. Jurgis promises himself that he will be calm and careful, and there will be no more accidents. Aaaand, because this novel loves to kill poor Jurgis's hopes and dreams, there is another totally unexpected disaster. Jurgis comes home one Saturday to find the women of the neighborhood gathered in Mrs. Jukniene's kitchen. Jurgis hears Marija crying upstairs. Mrs. Jukniene grabs Jurgis's arm to stop him from going up. Mrs. Jukniene tells Jurgis that Antanas has drowned to death in the street. So, Jurgis's son is dead.

Jurgis spends days away from home, looking for work, fighting to stay alive. A chance meeting between Elzbieta's son and a settlement worker provides Jurgis with a letter to the superintendent of a steel mill. Because the mill is far away, Jurgis sleeps at a lodging house during the week, returning to Packingtown on the weekends. An accident at the mill forces Jurgis to miss some work but enables him to spend some time with his son. Marija and Elzbieta are both finally working. It is springtime but Jurgis is already preparing for the next winter. One Saturday, after a heavy rain, Jurgis returns home to discover that Antanas has drowned.

Antanas' death is the second central turning point in The Jungle. Just when Jurgis' life appears to be back on track, just when he begins to have hope for the future, fate transforms his dreams into nightmares. Antanas is another character who dies, another victim of fate. The settlement worker introduced in Chapter 21 represents a reversal of sexual politics -- for the first time, a female controls a man based on sex and economics. Her interference, although doing nothing to help the unsafe conditions in the plant, does result in a job for Jurgis. This is the complete opposite of the abusive sexual politics that Connor exercised. Although she is the first woman to exhibit a position of power, the results are still negative. Although she enables Jurgis to find a job, the job keeps him from his family; therefore, he is unable to protect his son. In fitting literary irony, Sinclair places the death of Antanas during springtime -- typically the season of new life and rebirth -- and just as Jurgis begins to have a sense of new life and a new beginning, it is literally drowned. Glossary settlement an institution in a depressed and congested neighborhood offering social services and educational and recreational activities. naively in an unaffectedly, or sometimes foolishly, simple manner; artlessly. catechism a formal series of questions; close questioning. billet a long, rectangular or cylindrical unfinished bar of iron or steel, usually smaller than 36 inches. incandescent very bright; shining brilliantly. ingot a mass of metal cast into a bar or other convenient shape.

Only the children's wages keep the family from starvation while Jurgis spends more than ten days looking for another job. Juozapas, Teta Elzbieta's crippled child, begins to go to the local dump to find food. A rich woman finds him there and asks him about his life. Hearing of the tragedy and penury that pursues the family, she visits them at the boardinghouse. Shocked at the squalor in which they live, she resolves to find Jurgis a job. She is engaged to be married to a superintendent at a steel mill, so she writes a letter of recommendation for Jurgis. Jurgis takes the letter to the superintendent and gets himself hired. The mill is too far for Jurgis to return to the boardinghouse during the week, so he travels home only on the weekends. He loves his son with an overwhelming devotion. Antanas's first attempts at speech provide no end of delight to Jurgis. Jurgis begins to read the Sunday paper with the help of the children and settles in a livable routine. But he returns to the boardinghouse one day only to discover that a freak accident has occurred: Antanas has drowned in the mire of mud in the streets

The narrative shape of The Jungle is extremely simple: it exposes the fallacy of the American Dream by portraying the gradual destruction of the immigrant family at the hands of the forces of capitalism. Every section, every chapter, and nearly every individual event throughout most of the book operates according to this plan. In this section, not surprisingly, the family continues to suffer greater and greater misfortunes. Their home, the symbol of family life, has been taken from them; the building looks as if the family never even lived there. Jurgis's return to his home is a metaphor for the cyclical nature of generations of immigrants. These waves of immigrants pass through Packingtown and its misery--the only constant in their lives. Moreover, the second- and third-generation children of earlier waves of immigrants seem to forget that their ancestors suffered the very same abuses that they now perpetrate on the newer generations of immigrants. As theories about eugenics  arose in the late nineteenth century, making claims about the inherent inferiority of nonwhite peoples and white peoples of certain descent, Americans became hostile toward the waves of immigrants whom they perceived as infiltrators spoiling the purity of the American people. The first waves were constituted largely of northern and western Europeans. The Irish, then, stereotyped as potato-eating drunks, were among the early targets of ridicule. With the arrival of later waves of immigrants, largely from southern and eastern Europe, these earlier immigrants sought to take advantage of these new immigrants. Phil Connor, for example, an Irishman, takes part in the abuse and degradation that, a few decades earlier, the Irish suffered at the hands of more powerful ethnic groups. Historical memory is short if not nonexistent in The Jungle.  These chapters also function as the next stage of Sinclair's attack on capitalism. Earlier, he shows that child labor laws do nothing to stop child labor, implying that it is not possible to improve working conditions and labor practices from within the structures of capitalism. Jurgis's job at the harvester factory expounds upon the same idea. The factory supposedly functions according to philanthropic values, and the facilities are cleaner and the working conditions more pleasant. Nevertheless, the factory shuts down periodically after the rush season just like other factories, leaving thousands of laborers without the income necessary to survive. The factory's philanthropic values do nothing to change the essentially precarious existence of wage laborers. Again, working from within capitalism fails to provide wage laborers with a secure, decent living. The young woman who secures Jurgis a job with her recommendation shows compassion in an otherwise cruel world. However, her actions do nothing to change the dangerous working conditions in the steel factory where her fiance is a superintendent--Jurgis witnesses several men suffer horrendous, disabling accidents in the steel mill. Neither does her kind action make a difference in the dangerous conditions in the slums where wage laborers live. She helps Jurgis secure an income, but Antanas still drowns in the unpaved, muddy streets outside the boarding house. Through this example, Sinclair argues, pessimistically, that individual philanthropists working within the structures of capitalism are likewise ineffective at changing the lives of wage laborers for the better.