After the elections Jurgis stayed on in Packingtown and kept his
job. The agitation to break up the police protection of criminals was
continuing, and it seemed to him best to "lay low" for the present. He
had nearly three hundred dollars in the bank, and might have considered
himself entitled to a vacation; but he had an easy job, and force of
habit kept him at it. Besides, Mike Scully, whom he consulted, advised
him that something might "turn up" before long.

Jurgis got himself a place in a boardinghouse with some congenial
friends. He had already inquired of Aniele, and learned that Elzbieta
and her family had gone downtown, and so he gave no further thought
to them. He went with a new set, now, young unmarried fellows who were
"sporty." Jurgis had long ago cast off his fertilizer clothing, and
since going into politics he had donned a linen collar and a greasy red
necktie. He had some reason for thinking of his dress, for he was making
about eleven dollars a week, and two-thirds of it he might spend upon
his pleasures without ever touching his savings.

Sometimes he would ride down-town with a party of friends to the cheap
theaters and the music halls and other haunts with which they were
familiar. Many of the saloons in Packingtown had pool tables, and some
of them bowling alleys, by means of which he could spend his evenings
in petty gambling. Also, there were cards and dice. One time Jurgis got
into a game on a Saturday night and won prodigiously, and because he was
a man of spirit he stayed in with the rest and the game continued
until late Sunday afternoon, and by that time he was "out" over twenty
dollars. On Saturday nights, also, a number of balls were generally
given in Packingtown; each man would bring his "girl" with him, paying
half a dollar for a ticket, and several dollars additional for drinks
in the course of the festivities, which continued until three or four
o'clock in the morning, unless broken up by fighting. During all this
time the same man and woman would dance together, half-stupefied with
sensuality and drink.

Before long Jurgis discovered what Scully had meant by something
"turning up." In May the agreement between the packers and the unions
expired, and a new agreement had to be signed. Negotiations were going
on, and the yards were full of talk of a strike. The old scale had dealt
with the wages of the skilled men only; and of the members of the Meat
Workers' Union about two-thirds were unskilled men. In Chicago these
latter were receiving, for the most part, eighteen and a half cents an
hour, and the unions wished to make this the general wage for the next
year. It was not nearly so large a wage as it seemed--in the course of
the negotiations the union officers examined time checks to the amount
of ten thousand dollars, and they found that the highest wages paid had
been fourteen dollars a week, and the lowest two dollars and five cents,
and the average of the whole, six dollars and sixty-five cents. And six
dollars and sixty-five cents was hardly too much for a man to keep
a family on, considering the fact that the price of dressed meat had
increased nearly fifty per cent in the last five years, while the price
of "beef on the hoof" had decreased as much, it would have seemed that
the packers ought to be able to pay it; but the packers were unwilling
to pay it--they rejected the union demand, and to show what their
purpose was, a week or two after the agreement expired they put down the
wages of about a thousand men to sixteen and a half cents, and it was
said that old man Jones had vowed he would put them to fifteen before
he got through. There were a million and a half of men in the country
looking for work, a hundred thousand of them right in Chicago; and were
the packers to let the union stewards march into their places and bind
them to a contract that would lose them several thousand dollars a day
for a year? Not much!

All this was in June; and before long the question was submitted to a
referendum in the unions, and the decision was for a strike. It was the
same in all the packing house cities; and suddenly the newspapers and
public woke up to face the gruesome spectacle of a meat famine. All
sorts of pleas for a reconsideration were made, but the packers were
obdurate; and all the while they were reducing wages, and heading off
shipments of cattle, and rushing in wagon-loads of mattresses and cots.
So the men boiled over, and one night telegrams went out from the union
headquarters to all the big packing centers--to St. Paul, South Omaha,
Sioux City, St. Joseph, Kansas City, East St. Louis, and New York--and
the next day at noon between fifty and sixty thousand men drew off their
working clothes and marched out of the factories, and the great "Beef
Strike" was on.

Jurgis went to his dinner, and afterward he walked over to see Mike
Scully, who lived in a fine house, upon a street which had been decently
paved and lighted for his especial benefit. Scully had gone into
semi-retirement, and looked nervous and worried. "What do you want?" he
demanded, when he saw Jurgis.

"I came to see if maybe you could get me a place during the strike," the
other replied.

And Scully knit his brows and eyed him narrowly. In that morning's
papers Jurgis had read a fierce denunciation of the packers by Scully,
who had declared that if they did not treat their people better the
city authorities would end the matter by tearing down their plants. Now,
therefore, Jurgis was not a little taken aback when the other demanded
suddenly, "See here, Rudkus, why don't you stick by your job?"

Jurgis started. "Work as a scab?" he cried.

"Why not?" demanded Scully. "What's that to you?"

"But--but--" stammered Jurgis. He had somehow taken it for granted that
he should go out with his union. "The packers need good men, and need
them bad," continued the other, "and they'll treat a man right that
stands by them. Why don't you take your chance and fix yourself?"

"But," said Jurgis, "how could I ever be of any use to you--in
politics?"

"You couldn't be it anyhow," said Scully, abruptly.

"Why not?" asked Jurgis.

"Hell, man!" cried the other. "Don't you know you're a Republican? And
do you think I'm always going to elect Republicans? My brewer has found
out already how we served him, and there is the deuce to pay."

Jurgis looked dumfounded. He had never thought of that aspect of it
before. "I could be a Democrat," he said.

"Yes," responded the other, "but not right away; a man can't change his
politics every day. And besides, I don't need you--there'd be nothing
for you to do. And it's a long time to election day, anyhow; and what
are you going to do meantime?"

"I thought I could count on you," began Jurgis.

"Yes," responded Scully, "so you could--I never yet went back on a
friend. But is it fair to leave the job I got you and come to me for
another? I have had a hundred fellows after me today, and what can I
do? I've put seventeen men on the city payroll to clean streets this one
week, and do you think I can keep that up forever? It wouldn't do for
me to tell other men what I tell you, but you've been on the inside,
and you ought to have sense enough to see for yourself. What have you to
gain by a strike?"

"I hadn't thought," said Jurgis.

"Exactly," said Scully, "but you'd better. Take my word for it, the
strike will be over in a few days, and the men will be beaten; and
meantime what you can get out of it will belong to you. Do you see?"

And Jurgis saw. He went back to the yards, and into the workroom. The
men had left a long line of hogs in various stages of preparation, and
the foreman was directing the feeble efforts of a score or two of clerks
and stenographers and office boys to finish up the job and get them into
the chilling rooms. Jurgis went straight up to him and announced, "I
have come back to work, Mr. Murphy."

The boss's face lighted up. "Good man!" he cried. "Come ahead!"

"Just a moment," said Jurgis, checking his enthusiasm. "I think I ought
to get a little more wages."

"Yes," replied the other, "of course. What do you want?"

Jurgis had debated on the way. His nerve almost failed him now, but he
clenched his hands. "I think I ought to have' three dollars a day," he
said.

"All right," said the other, promptly; and before the day was out our
friend discovered that the clerks and stenographers and office boys were
getting five dollars a day, and then he could have kicked himself!

So Jurgis became one of the new "American heroes," a man whose virtues
merited comparison with those of the martyrs of Lexington and Valley
Forge. The resemblance was not complete, of course, for Jurgis was
generously paid and comfortably clad, and was provided with a spring cot
and a mattress and three substantial meals a day; also he was perfectly
at ease, and safe from all peril of life and limb, save only in the
case that a desire for beer should lead him to venture outside of the
stockyards gates. And even in the exercise of this privilege he was not
left unprotected; a good part of the inadequate police force of Chicago
was suddenly diverted from its work of hunting criminals, and rushed out
to serve him. The police, and the strikers also, were determined that
there should be no violence; but there was another party interested
which was minded to the contrary--and that was the press. On the first
day of his life as a strikebreaker Jurgis quit work early, and in a
spirit of bravado he challenged three men of his acquaintance to go
outside and get a drink. They accepted, and went through the big Halsted
Street gate, where several policemen were watching, and also some union
pickets, scanning sharply those who passed in and out. Jurgis and
his companions went south on Halsted Street; past the hotel, and then
suddenly half a dozen men started across the street toward them and
proceeded to argue with them concerning the error of their ways. As the
arguments were not taken in the proper spirit, they went on to threats;
and suddenly one of them jerked off the hat of one of the four and
flung it over the fence. The man started after it, and then, as a cry
of "Scab!" was raised and a dozen people came running out of saloons and
doorways, a second man's heart failed him and he followed. Jurgis and
the fourth stayed long enough to give themselves the satisfaction of
a quick exchange of blows, and then they, too, took to their heels and
fled back of the hotel and into the yards again. Meantime, of course,
policemen were coming on a run, and as a crowd gathered other police got
excited and sent in a riot call. Jurgis knew nothing of this, but went
back to "Packers' Avenue," and in front of the "Central Time Station"
he saw one of his companions, breathless and wild with excitement,
narrating to an ever growing throng how the four had been attacked and
surrounded by a howling mob, and had been nearly torn to pieces. While
he stood listening, smiling cynically, several dapper young men stood by
with notebooks in their hands, and it was not more than two hours later
that Jurgis saw newsboys running about with armfuls of newspapers,
printed in red and black letters six inches high:

VIOLENCE IN THE YARDS! STRIKEBREAKERS SURROUNDED BY FRENZIED MOB!

If he had been able to buy all of the newspapers of the United States
the next morning, he might have discovered that his beer-hunting exploit
was being perused by some two score millions of people, and had served
as a text for editorials in half the staid and solemn business-men's
newspapers in the land.

Jurgis was to see more of this as time passed. For the present, his work
being over, he was free to ride into the city, by a railroad direct from
the yards, or else to spend the night in a room where cots had been
laid in rows. He chose the latter, but to his regret, for all night long
gangs of strikebreakers kept arriving. As very few of the better class
of workingmen could be got for such work, these specimens of the new
American hero contained an assortment of the criminals and thugs of
the city, besides Negroes and the lowest foreigners--Greeks, Roumanians,
Sicilians, and Slovaks. They had been attracted more by the prospect of
disorder than by the big wages; and they made the night hideous with
singing and carousing, and only went to sleep when the time came for
them to get up to work.

In the morning before Jurgis had finished his breakfast, "Pat" Murphy
ordered him to one of the superintendents, who questioned him as to his
experience in the work of the killing room. His heart began to thump
with excitement, for he divined instantly that his hour had come--that
he was to be a boss!

Some of the foremen were union members, and many who were not had gone
out with the men. It was in the killing department that the packers had
been left most in the lurch, and precisely here that they could least
afford it; the smoking and canning and salting of meat might wait, and
all the by-products might be wasted--but fresh meats must be had, or the
restaurants and hotels and brownstone houses would feel the pinch, and
then "public opinion" would take a startling turn.

An opportunity such as this would not come twice to a man; and Jurgis
seized it. Yes, he knew the work, the whole of it, and he could teach it
to others. But if he took the job and gave satisfaction he would expect
to keep it--they would not turn him off at the end of the strike? To
which the superintendent replied that he might safely trust Durham's
for that--they proposed to teach these unions a lesson, and most of
all those foremen who had gone back on them. Jurgis would receive five
dollars a day during the strike, and twenty-five a week after it was
settled.

So our friend got a pair of "slaughter pen" boots and "jeans," and flung
himself at his task. It was a weird sight, there on the killing beds--a
throng of stupid black Negroes, and foreigners who could not understand
a word that was said to them, mixed with pale-faced, hollow-chested
bookkeepers and clerks, half-fainting for the tropical heat and the
sickening stench of fresh blood--and all struggling to dress a dozen
or two cattle in the same place where, twenty-four hours ago, the old
killing gang had been speeding, with their marvelous precision, turning
out four hundred carcasses every hour!

The Negroes and the "toughs" from the Levee did not want to work,
and every few minutes some of them would feel obliged to retire and
recuperate. In a couple of days Durham and Company had electric fans up
to cool off the rooms for them, and even couches for them to rest
on; and meantime they could go out and find a shady corner and take a
"snooze," and as there was no place for any one in particular, and no
system, it might be hours before their boss discovered them. As for
the poor office employees, they did their best, moved to it by terror;
thirty of them had been "fired" in a bunch that first morning for
refusing to serve, besides a number of women clerks and typewriters who
had declined to act as waitresses.

It was such a force as this that Jurgis had to organize. He did his
best, flying here and there, placing them in rows and showing them the
tricks; he had never given an order in his life before, but he had taken
enough of them to know, and he soon fell into the spirit of it, and
roared and stormed like any old stager. He had not the most tractable
pupils, however. "See hyar, boss," a big black "buck" would begin, "ef
you doan' like de way Ah does dis job, you kin get somebody else to do
it." Then a crowd would gather and listen, muttering threats. After the
first meal nearly all the steel knives had been missing, and now every
Negro had one, ground to a fine point, hidden in his boots.

There was no bringing order out of such a chaos, Jurgis soon discovered;
and he fell in with the spirit of the thing--there was no reason why he
should wear himself out with shouting. If hides and guts were slashed
and rendered useless there was no way of tracing it to any one; and if
a man lay off and forgot to come back there was nothing to be gained
by seeking him, for all the rest would quit in the meantime. Everything
went, during the strike, and the packers paid. Before long Jurgis
found that the custom of resting had suggested to some alert minds the
possibility of registering at more than one place and earning more than
one five dollars a day. When he caught a man at this he "fired" him,
but it chanced to be in a quiet corner, and the man tendered him a
ten-dollar bill and a wink, and he took them. Of course, before long
this custom spread, and Jurgis was soon making quite a good income from
it.

In the face of handicaps such as these the packers counted themselves
lucky if they could kill off the cattle that had been crippled in
transit and the hogs that had developed disease. Frequently, in the
course of a two or three days' trip, in hot weather and without water,
some hog would develop cholera, and die; and the rest would attack him
before he had ceased kicking, and when the car was opened there would be
nothing of him left but the bones. If all the hogs in this carload were
not killed at once, they would soon be down with the dread disease, and
there would be nothing to do but make them into lard. It was the same
with cattle that were gored and dying, or were limping with broken bones
stuck through their flesh--they must be killed, even if brokers and
buyers and superintendents had to take off their coats and help
drive and cut and skin them. And meantime, agents of the packers were
gathering gangs of Negroes in the country districts of the far South,
promising them five dollars a day and board, and being careful not to
mention there was a strike; already carloads of them were on the way,
with special rates from the railroads, and all traffic ordered out of
the way. Many towns and cities were taking advantage of the chance to
clear out their jails and workhouses--in Detroit the magistrates would
release every man who agreed to leave town within twenty-four hours,
and agents of the packers were in the courtrooms to ship them right. And
meantime trainloads of supplies were coming in for their accommodation,
including beer and whisky, so that they might not be tempted to go
outside. They hired thirty young girls in Cincinnati to "pack fruit,"
and when they arrived put them at work canning corned beef, and put cots
for them to sleep in a public hallway, through which the men passed. As
the gangs came in day and night, under the escort of squads of police,
they stowed away in unused workrooms and storerooms, and in the car
sheds, crowded so closely together that the cots touched. In some places
they would use the same room for eating and sleeping, and at night the
men would put their cots upon the tables, to keep away from the swarms
of rats.

But with all their best efforts, the packers were demoralized.
Ninety per cent of the men had walked out; and they faced the task of
completely remaking their labor force--and with the price of meat up
thirty per cent, and the public clamoring for a settlement. They made an
offer to submit the whole question at issue to arbitration; and at the
end of ten days the unions accepted it, and the strike was called off.
It was agreed that all the men were to be re-employed within forty-five
days, and that there was to be "no discrimination against union men."

This was an anxious time for Jurgis. If the men were taken back "without
discrimination," he would lose his present place. He sought out the
superintendent, who smiled grimly and bade him "wait and see." Durham's
strikebreakers were few of them leaving.

Whether or not the "settlement" was simply a trick of the packers to
gain time, or whether they really expected to break the strike and
cripple the unions by the plan, cannot be said; but that night there
went out from the office of Durham and Company a telegram to all the big
packing centers, "Employ no union leaders." And in the morning, when the
twenty thousand men thronged into the yards, with their dinner pails and
working clothes, Jurgis stood near the door of the hog-trimming room,
where he had worked before the strike, and saw a throng of eager
men, with a score or two of policemen watching them; and he saw a
superintendent come out and walk down the line, and pick out man after
man that pleased him; and one after another came, and there were some
men up near the head of the line who were never picked--they being
the union stewards and delegates, and the men Jurgis had heard making
speeches at the meetings. Each time, of course, there were louder
murmurings and angrier looks. Over where the cattle butchers were
waiting, Jurgis heard shouts and saw a crowd, and he hurried there. One
big butcher, who was president of the Packing Trades Council, had been
passed over five times, and the men were wild with rage; they had
appointed a committee of three to go in and see the superintendent, and
the committee had made three attempts, and each time the police had
clubbed them back from the door. Then there were yells and hoots,
continuing until at last the superintendent came to the door. "We all go
back or none of us do!" cried a hundred voices. And the other shook his
fist at them, and shouted, "You went out of here like cattle, and like
cattle you'll come back!"

Then suddenly the big butcher president leaped upon a pile of stones and
yelled: "It's off, boys. We'll all of us quit again!" And so the cattle
butchers declared a new strike on the spot; and gathering their members
from the other plants, where the same trick had been played, they
marched down Packers' Avenue, which was thronged with a dense mass of
workers, cheering wildly. Men who had already got to work on the killing
beds dropped their tools and joined them; some galloped here and there
on horseback, shouting the tidings, and within half an hour the whole of
Packingtown was on strike again, and beside itself with fury.

There was quite a different tone in Packingtown after this--the place
was a seething caldron of passion, and the "scab" who ventured into
it fared badly. There were one or two of these incidents each day, the
newspapers detailing them, and always blaming them upon the unions. Yet
ten years before, when there were no unions in Packingtown, there was
a strike, and national troops had to be called, and there were pitched
battles fought at night, by the light of blazing freight trains.
Packingtown was always a center of violence; in "Whisky Point," where
there were a hundred saloons and one glue factory, there was always
fighting, and always more of it in hot weather. Any one who had taken
the trouble to consult the station house blotter would have found that
there was less violence that summer than ever before--and this while
twenty thousand men were out of work, and with nothing to do all day
but brood upon bitter wrongs. There was no one to picture the battle the
union leaders were fighting--to hold this huge army in rank, to keep
it from straggling and pillaging, to cheer and encourage and guide a
hundred thousand people, of a dozen different tongues, through six long
weeks of hunger and disappointment and despair.

Meantime the packers had set themselves definitely to the task of making
a new labor force. A thousand or two of strikebreakers were brought in
every night, and distributed among the various plants. Some of them were
experienced workers,--butchers, salesmen, and managers from the packers'
branch stores, and a few union men who had deserted from other cities;
but the vast majority were "green" Negroes from the cotton districts of
the far South, and they were herded into the packing plants like sheep.
There was a law forbidding the use of buildings as lodging-houses unless
they were licensed for the purpose, and provided with proper windows,
stairways, and fire escapes; but here, in a "paint room," reached only
by an enclosed "chute," a room without a single window and only one
door, a hundred men were crowded upon mattresses on the floor. Up on
the third story of the "hog house" of Jones's was a storeroom, without
a window, into which they crowded seven hundred men, sleeping upon the
bare springs of cots, and with a second shift to use them by day.
And when the clamor of the public led to an investigation into
these conditions, and the mayor of the city was forced to order the
enforcement of the law, the packers got a judge to issue an injunction
forbidding him to do it!

Just at this time the mayor was boasting that he had put an end
to gambling and prize fighting in the city; but here a swarm of
professional gamblers had leagued themselves with the police to fleece
the strikebreakers; and any night, in the big open space in front of
Brown's, one might see brawny Negroes stripped to the waist and pounding
each other for money, while a howling throng of three or four thousand
surged about, men and women, young white girls from the country rubbing
elbows with big buck Negroes with daggers in their boots, while rows of
woolly heads peered down from every window of the surrounding factories.
The ancestors of these black people had been savages in Africa; and
since then they had been chattel slaves, or had been held down by a
community ruled by the traditions of slavery. Now for the first time
they were free--free to gratify every passion, free to wreck themselves.
They were wanted to break a strike, and when it was broken they would be
shipped away, and their present masters would never see them again; and
so whisky and women were brought in by the carload and sold to them, and
hell was let loose in the yards. Every night there were stabbings and
shootings; it was said that the packers had blank permits, which
enabled them to ship dead bodies from the city without troubling the
authorities. They lodged men and women on the same floor; and with
the night there began a saturnalia of debauchery--scenes such as never
before had been witnessed in America. And as the women were the dregs
from the brothels of Chicago, and the men were for the most part
ignorant country Negroes, the nameless diseases of vice were soon rife;
and this where food was being handled which was sent out to every corner
of the civilized world.

The "Union Stockyards" were never a pleasant place; but now they were
not only a collection of slaughterhouses, but also the camping place
of an army of fifteen or twenty thousand human beasts. All day long the
blazing midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations:
upon tens of thousands of cattle crowded into pens whose wooden floors
stank and steamed contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn
railroad tracks, and huge blocks of dingy meat factories, whose
labyrinthine passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate them;
and there were not merely rivers of hot blood, and car-loads of
moist flesh, and rendering vats and soap caldrons, glue factories and
fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell--there were also
tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy laundry of the
workers hung out to dry, and dining rooms littered with food and black
with flies, and toilet rooms that were open sewers.

And then at night, when this throng poured out into the streets to
play--fighting, gambling, drinking and carousing, cursing and screaming,
laughing and singing, playing banjoes and dancing! They were worked
in the yards all the seven days of the week, and they had their prize
fights and crap games on Sunday nights as well; but then around the
corner one might see a bonfire blazing, and an old, gray-headed Negress,
lean and witchlike, her hair flying wild and her eyes blazing, yelling
and chanting of the fires of perdition and the blood of the "Lamb,"
while men and women lay down upon the ground and moaned and screamed in
convulsions of terror and remorse.

Such were the stockyards during the strike; while the unions watched
in sullen despair, and the country clamored like a greedy child for its
food, and the packers went grimly on their way. Each day they added new
workers, and could be more stern with the old ones--could put them on
piecework, and dismiss them if they did not keep up the pace. Jurgis was
now one of their agents in this process; and he could feel the change
day by day, like the slow starting up of a huge machine. He had gotten
used to being a master of men; and because of the stifling heat and
the stench, and the fact that he was a "scab" and knew it and despised
himself. He was drinking, and developing a villainous temper, and he
stormed and cursed and raged at his men, and drove them until they were
ready to drop with exhaustion.

Then one day late in August, a superintendent ran into the place
and shouted to Jurgis and his gang to drop their work and come. They
followed him outside, to where, in the midst of a dense throng, they
saw several two-horse trucks waiting, and three patrol-wagon loads of
police. Jurgis and his men sprang upon one of the trucks, and the driver
yelled to the crowd, and they went thundering away at a gallop. Some
steers had just escaped from the yards, and the strikers had got hold of
them, and there would be the chance of a scrap!

They went out at the Ashland Avenue gate, and over in the direction of
the "dump." There was a yell as soon as they were sighted, men and women
rushing out of houses and saloons as they galloped by. There were eight
or ten policemen on the truck, however, and there was no disturbance
until they came to a place where the street was blocked with a dense
throng. Those on the flying truck yelled a warning and the crowd
scattered pell-mell, disclosing one of the steers lying in its blood.
There were a good many cattle butchers about just then, with nothing
much to do, and hungry children at home; and so some one had knocked out
the steer--and as a first-class man can kill and dress one in a couple
of minutes, there were a good many steaks and roasts already missing.
This called for punishment, of course; and the police proceeded to
administer it by leaping from the truck and cracking at every head they
saw. There were yells of rage and pain, and the terrified people fled
into houses and stores, or scattered helter-skelter down the street.
Jurgis and his gang joined in the sport, every man singling out his
victim, and striving to bring him to bay and punch him. If he fled into
a house his pursuer would smash in the flimsy door and follow him up the
stairs, hitting every one who came within reach, and finally dragging
his squealing quarry from under a bed or a pile of old clothes in a
closet.

Jurgis and two policemen chased some men into a bar-room. One of
them took shelter behind the bar, where a policeman cornered him and
proceeded to whack him over the back and shoulders, until he lay down
and gave a chance at his head. The others leaped a fence in the rear,
balking the second policeman, who was fat; and as he came back, furious
and cursing, a big Polish woman, the owner of the saloon, rushed in
screaming, and received a poke in the stomach that doubled her up on
the floor. Meantime Jurgis, who was of a practical temper, was helping
himself at the bar; and the first policeman, who had laid out his man,
joined him, handing out several more bottles, and filling his pockets
besides, and then, as he started to leave, cleaning off all the balance
with a sweep of his club. The din of the glass crashing to the floor
brought the fat Polish woman to her feet again, but another policeman
came up behind her and put his knee into her back and his hands over her
eyes--and then called to his companion, who went back and broke open
the cash drawer and filled his pockets with the contents. Then the three
went outside, and the man who was holding the woman gave her a shove and
dashed out himself. The gang having already got the carcass on to the
truck, the party set out at a trot, followed by screams and curses,
and a shower of bricks and stones from unseen enemies. These bricks and
stones would figure in the accounts of the "riot" which would be sent
out to a few thousand newspapers within an hour or two; but the episode
of the cash drawer would never be mentioned again, save only in the
heartbreaking legends of Packingtown.

It was late in the afternoon when they got back, and they dressed out
the remainder of the steer, and a couple of others that had been killed,
and then knocked off for the day. Jurgis went downtown to supper, with
three friends who had been on the other trucks, and they exchanged
reminiscences on the way. Afterward they drifted into a roulette parlor,
and Jurgis, who was never lucky at gambling, dropped about fifteen
dollars. To console himself he had to drink a good deal, and he went
back to Packingtown about two o'clock in the morning, very much the
worse for his excursion, and, it must be confessed, entirely deserving
the calamity that was in store for him.

As he was going to the place where he slept, he met a painted-cheeked
woman in a greasy "kimono," and she put her arm about his waist to
steady him; they turned into a dark room they were passing--but scarcely
had they taken two steps before suddenly a door swung open, and a man
entered, carrying a lantern. "Who's there?" he called sharply. And
Jurgis started to mutter some reply; but at the same instant the man
raised his light, which flashed in his face, so that it was possible
to recognize him. Jurgis stood stricken dumb, and his heart gave a leap
like a mad thing. The man was Connor!

Connor, the boss of the loading gang! The man who had seduced his
wife--who had sent him to prison, and wrecked his home, ruined his life!
He stood there, staring, with the light shining full upon him.

Jurgis had often thought of Connor since coming back to Packingtown, but
it had been as of something far off, that no longer concerned him.
Now, however, when he saw him, alive and in the flesh, the same thing
happened to him that had happened before--a flood of rage boiled up in
him, a blind frenzy seized him. And he flung himself at the man, and
smote him between the eyes--and then, as he fell, seized him by the
throat and began to pound his head upon the stones.

The woman began screaming, and people came rushing in. The lantern had
been upset and extinguished, and it was so dark they could not see a
thing; but they could hear Jurgis panting, and hear the thumping of
his victim's skull, and they rushed there and tried to pull him off.
Precisely as before, Jurgis came away with a piece of his enemy's flesh
between his teeth; and, as before, he went on fighting with those who
had interfered with him, until a policeman had come and beaten him into
insensibility.

And so Jurgis spent the balance of the night in the stockyards station
house. This time, however, he had money in his pocket, and when he came
to his senses he could get something to drink, and also a messenger
to take word of his plight to "Bush" Harper. Harper did not appear,
however, until after the prisoner, feeling very weak and ill, had been
hailed into court and remanded at five hundred dollars' bail to await
the result of his victim's injuries. Jurgis was wild about this, because
a different magistrate had chanced to be on the bench, and he had
stated that he had never been arrested before, and also that he had been
attacked first--and if only someone had been there to speak a good word
for him, he could have been let off at once.

But Harper explained that he had been downtown, and had not got the
message. "What's happened to you?" he asked.

"I've been doing a fellow up," said Jurgis, "and I've got to get five
hundred dollars' bail."

"I can arrange that all right," said the other--"though it may cost you
a few dollars, of course. But what was the trouble?"

"It was a man that did me a mean trick once," answered Jurgis.

"Who is he?"

"He's a foreman in Brown's or used to be. His name's Connor."

And the other gave a start. "Connor!" he cried. "Not Phil Connor!"

"Yes," said Jurgis, "that's the fellow. Why?"

"Good God!" exclaimed the other, "then you're in for it, old man! I
can't help you!"

"Not help me! Why not?"

"Why, he's one of Scully's biggest men--he's a member of the War-Whoop
League, and they talked of sending him to the legislature! Phil Connor!
Great heavens!"

Jurgis sat dumb with dismay.

"Why, he can send you to Joliet, if he wants to!" declared the other.

"Can't I have Scully get me off before he finds out about it?" asked
Jurgis, at length.

"But Scully's out of town," the other answered. "I don't even know where
he is--he's run away to dodge the strike."

That was a pretty mess, indeed. Poor Jurgis sat half-dazed. His pull had
run up against a bigger pull, and he was down and out! "But what am I
going to do?" he asked, weakly.

"How should I know?" said the other. "I shouldn't even dare to get bail
for you--why, I might ruin myself for life!"

Again there was silence. "Can't you do it for me," Jurgis asked, "and
pretend that you didn't know who I'd hit?"

"But what good would that do you when you came to stand trial?" asked
Harper. Then he sat buried in thought for a minute or two. "There's
nothing--unless it's this," he said. "I could have your bail reduced;
and then if you had the money you could pay it and skip."

"How much will it be?" Jurgis asked, after he had had this explained
more in detail.

"I don't know," said the other. "How much do you own?"

"I've got about three hundred dollars," was the answer.

"Well," was Harper's reply, "I'm not sure, but I'll try and get you off
for that. I'll take the risk for friendship's sake--for I'd hate to see
you sent to state's prison for a year or two."

And so finally Jurgis ripped out his bankbook--which was sewed up in his
trousers--and signed an order, which "Bush" Harper wrote, for all the
money to be paid out. Then the latter went and got it, and hurried to
the court, and explained to the magistrate that Jurgis was a
decent fellow and a friend of Scully's, who had been attacked by a
strike-breaker. So the bail was reduced to three hundred dollars, and
Harper went on it himself; he did not tell this to Jurgis, however--nor
did he tell him that when the time for trial came it would be an easy
matter for him to avoid the forfeiting of the bail, and pocket the three
hundred dollars as his reward for the risk of offending Mike Scully! All
that he told Jurgis was that he was now free, and that the best thing
he could do was to clear out as quickly as possible; and so Jurgis
overwhelmed with gratitude and relief, took the dollar and fourteen
cents that was left him out of all his bank account, and put it with the
two dollars and quarter that was left from his last night's celebration,
and boarded a streetcar and got off at the other end of Chicago.

Jurgis keeps his job after the elections and begins a new life as a "sporty" young man. He wears nicer clothes now, and stays out until all hours of the night, gambling and drinking and going to parties. Soon, however, there is talk of a strike, and negotiations between the Meat Workers' Union and the packinghouse owners begin to break down. The price of meat has gone up in past years, so the unions demanded more pay. The bosses denied the pay, so word went out to all the packing plants on the East Coast and in the Mid-West, and soon the great "Beef Strike" begins. Jurgis walks over to see Mike Scully and asks for a job. Scully says that he cannot do it and tells Jurgis to go and break the strike and take back a job in the packinghouses. Jurgis asks if he could be in politics again, but Scully tells him no because he is now a Republican and Scully did not plan to elect a Republican again. Jurgis had not thought of this development. Jurgis then goes back to the packinghouse and tells them that he wants a job. They eagerly put him to work for three dollars a day and Jurgis becomes one of the new "American heroes" who shows the virtues "of the martyrs of Lexington and Valley Forge" since he broke the strike lines. One night, he goes out for a beer with some of his fellow strikebreakers, and a gang of union men confronts them. A fight breaks out and the next day, millions of people read of the violence in Chicago over the strikes. One day, Jurgis is asked to become a boss on the killing floors. Jurgis jumps at the opportunity and soon he is directing and giving orders to a group of unskilled laborers. The packinghouses had brought in the lowest classes of workers. They began to ship in "Negroes" from the South to take the place of the union men. Many of the men do not work, but the plants can do nothing because they need to break the union strike. Jurgis makes even more money by "firing" a man who then pays him ten dollars to keep his job. The Packers then devise a plan to cause the unions even more hardships. They negotiate a deal with the union leaders, but when the men come back to work, they intentionally deny jobs to union leaders. The leaders are so angry over this that they go back on strike, and Packingtown is "beside itself with fury. With the return of the strike, the Packers make a new effort to bring in cheap labor from the South. Most of the new laborers are "'green' negroes from the cotton districts of the far South" who were the ancestors of "savages in Africa" and had been chattel slaves. For the first time they were free, -- free to gratify every passion, free to wreck themselves. There is great debauchery and vice in the stockyards then. These new workers care even less for the cleanliness of their work or their life. Jurgis, now a foreman, begins to dislike himself for being a scab and a traitor. He drinks even more and develops a "villainous temper" which he uses on his underlings. One evening, a few of the workers illegally kill a cow for meat. The police descend on the yards and begin to beat any black man they can find. Jurgis joins in the fray and begins to beat people in a saloon. Jurgis sees a police officer come in and beat up the woman barkeeper. The policeman then fills his pockets with bottles of liquor and raids the cash register. One evening, after knocking off from work early, Jurgis goes downtown where he has dinner and gets involved in gambling. He loses his money and then makes his way back home. On the way, he meets a prostitute who begins to take him into her house when a man with a lantern comes out and demands to know why there is such noise on the street. When the light reaches his face, Jurgis sees that it is Connor, the man who raped his wife. Jurgis becomes furious and begins to beat Connor again, smashing his head against a stone. A policeman comes over and beats Jurgis. The next day, in jail, Jurgis gets a five hundred dollar bail. Because he has some money now, he calls Harper to help get him out of jail. When Jurgis tells Harper what he has done, Harper tells him that he cannot help him. Connor was a close friend of Scully's and by beating him, Jurgis's "pull had run up against a bigger pull, and he was down and out. Harper negotiates the bail down to three hundred, which Jurgis pays, and he tells Jurgis that the only way to keep his freedom is to skip town. Jurgis boards a streetcar and makes his way to the other side of Chicago with only a few dollars left to his name

In Chapter Twenty-Four, Sinclair notes that Jurgis's journey to the home of the rich meat packer is the greatest adventure of his life. This is an ironic statement since Jurgis finds no real adventure there and, in fact, is once again subject to a string of events that is out of his control yet is deterministic for his fate. On the surface, the descriptions of the lavish settings, the carefully prepared food, and the way in which Freddie Jones unthinkingly spends money, provides as stark a contrast as possible between the lives of the rich and the lives of the poor. It shows the disconnect between those that own the packing plants and those that work there. Freddie Jones finds it humorous that Jurgis had once worked in the plants owned by his father. Jurgis finds it just as incomprehensible, however, that his labor is used to provide such a lavish estate. Notably, neither Freddie Jones, nor Jurgis, makes broad generalized judgments of the other during the scene. The servants, who have presumably moved up in social standing because of the jobs they have been able to attain, do judge Jurgis a tramp and throw him out of the house. On another level, Sinclair recreates the setting of eighteenth-century France. In several of the passages, Sinclair has Jones allude to fine French things and to practices of the French aristocracy. For Sinclair, the French Revolution of 1789 best epitomized the collective power of the people used to overthrow the extravagances of aristocracy and to claim power. By using this scene of Chicago aristocracy, Sinclair is suggesting that a similar time will come in which the people will be made aware of the lifestyle their labor and toil produces for those that own the means of production. This, Sinclair hopes, will result in revolution. The novel continues in its narratives of descent. It should be noted the order of events into which Jurgis descends. Some critics have noted that the novel can be read as a kind of modern re-telling of Dante's Inferno, in which Dante descends through the levels of hell, witnessing the horrors of each and reasons for such punishment. Significantly, Jurgis ventures into the world of criminals, then politicians, before being turned out of each, which might mean that Sinclair sees politicians as even worse criminals than those that actively participate in criminal activities. Jurgis's time with Mike Scully's political machine is an opportunity for Sinclair to describe in detail the corrupt ways that politicians and business people controlled the political and economic systems of Chicago. Sinclair notes how neither of the major political parties, Democrats or Republicans, stand up for any kind of political value. Instead, they are each engaged in a race to hold onto the power they already have. Scully, who is head of the Democratic Party, works to elect a Republican candidate so that he himself will be able to hold onto his seat in the next election. The Republican policies will be no different from the Democratic ones and that neither party will actually work towards improving the lives of those that vote for them. This cynicism will be contrasted in future chapters with the convictions of the Socialist Party and their insistence that there be no political leadership. Jurgis soon becomes a participant of the Beef Strikes. The Beef Strikes were a series of historical strikes that occurred in the first decade of the twentieth century. On July 12, 1904, almost 30,000 packing plant workers left their jobs to strike for better wages and conditions. The packers had not willingness to concede to these demands, and so they instituted a program of bringing poor labor, many of them poverty stricken African Americans from the US South, to the plants. They had higher wages than normal workers did, even though they were unskilled. These tactics proved successful and packing plant workers such as Jurgis returned to their jobs without gaining concessions from the packers. These scenes in the novel have been criticized as being racist and inaccurate in depicting immigrant and racial strife in the stockyards. Sinclair's purpose is to show the way in which workers devolve into animals and how the conditions of Packingtown come to mirror the stockyards full of animals. These poor workers, Sinclair suggests, became sacrifices so that the packers might break the strike and, one day, produce larger profits.

Jurgis sticks around Packingtown and keeps his job after the elections. He asks Mrs. Jukniene what has happened to Elzbieta and the rest. Apparently, they have all moved down town. Jurgis starts doing all of the fun things you can do in a city when you have friends and money: he plays pool and cards, he goes to movie theaters, and he dances with the ladies. Meanwhile, there are troubles between the union and the packing plants . By June, the unions decide to strike across all the big meatpacking centers in the country. So, Jurgis decides to go see Mike Scully about what he should do. Mike Scully asks Jurgis why he can't just stay on at his job. Jurgis is totally taken aback. It has never occurred to him to work as a "scab" - a union word for a person who keeps working even while a labor strike is going on. Mike Scully tells Jurgis he can't be useful in the campaign process now anyway - Jurgis is widely known as a Republican, and Mike Scully is a Democrat. It'll be a while before Jurgis can help Mike Scully out again. So Jurgis goes back to the largely empty factory. His boss, "Pat" Murphy, is glad to see Jurgis. In the middle of a strike, suddenly, there is a lot more need for workers than there are workers willing to come in. So Jurgis can demand much higher pay than usual - three bucks a day. Jurgis is having a good time - he's being well-paid and is very comfortable. The one spot of bother comes when he and his buddies try to leave the factory to grab a beer. A bunch of union guys walking the picket line call Jurgis a scab and exchange a few punches with him. The whole fight is over in about two seconds, but the newspapers immediately report, "Violence in the Yards! Strikebreakers Surrounded by Frenzied Mob!" . This is, of course, ridiculous. The next morning, "Pat" Murphy calls Jurgis in and asks if he has experience on the killing floors. Jurgis realizes he is about to get a promotion to boss. Jurgis makes sure that he will get to keep his foreman job even after the strike. "Pat" Murphy agrees: the meatpacking plant owners don't want to encourage union members by making them bosses. Being a boss of this temporary labor force is not great: a lot of the workers aren't exactly committed to working hard, and they don't listen to Jurgis's orders. Still, Jurgis doesn't sweat too much over it - if he can't make his men work, he's not going to break his back over it. Life inside the factory is getting pretty grim. There's lots of alcohol available, and plenty of food, but the workforce is disordered and there are hints of violence all over the place. Eventually, the unions agree to come back to work after 45 days. Even though the packing companies promise that they will not target union leaders for any kind of punishment, there is still an order from up top that no union leaders should be hired back to their old jobs. This kind of selective hiring totally pisses off the unions. When the unions see that the meatpacking plants are only taking some of their workers and not others, the cattle butchers decide to go on strike again right there. Things are taking a dangerous turn in Packingtown, and being a scab is suddenly really not a good position. So the strike continues, and the factories stay under siege. Because scabs can't cross the picket lines for their own safety, they are mostly living in the factories themselves. The packers keep bringing in people they are recruiting from outside of the cities - mostly poor African Americans from the South who have no experience with meatpacking at all. Plenty of criminals take advantage of this sudden influx of new people to start up gambling rings and illegal boxing in the stockyards. So now, the stockyards are not only filled with animals waiting to slaughter. They are also packed full of people sleeping in temporary cots, drinking a great deal, and having sex with the swarm of prostitutes that have come to the yards to make some money. The smell of all of these guys collected in one place - and their dirty laundry, and their awful, awful toilets - is absolutely disgusting. Jurgis comes to hate himself for working against union interests. He becomes bad-tempered and he starts drinking again. One day, the news comes that a couple of cattle have escaped out into the crowd of striking workers. The packers put Jurgis and his crew on a truck so that they can go and fight these workers. See, because the guys outside are all experienced cattle butchers, they quickly manage to knock one of the cattle down. They all have hungry families at home, so they start cutting up the meat for their own use. The police jump into this scene and start using their clubs on every union member they can reach, because this is technically theft. Jurgis and his boys join in the violence. Jurgis and a couple of cops chase a guy into a bar. As the second cop runs after the union guy, Jurgis and the first cop both start helping themselves to drinks inside the bar. And then it gets worse: one of the two cops grabs the Polish woman bartender to hold her back while the second cop goes through her cash register and takes all of her money. Then the three run men run off, and the riot outside dies down. Jurgis gets trashed that night. He finds a woman whom he plans to sleep with. They head into a dark room together. Who should Jurgis find there but Connor, his old nemesis! Jurgis suddenly feels his old rage at Connor welling up again. He leaps on top of Connor. Jurgis starts to pound Connor's head against the floor. Once again, Jurgis bites off a piece of the guy. The cops come and pull Jurgis off after beating him unconscious. Jurgis spends the night at the stockyard police station. The next morning, rather late, Jurgis's old buddy "Bush" Harper comes by. Bail has been set at 500 bucks. "Bush" Harper says he can manage that. When Jurgis tells "Bush" the name of the guy he beat up, though, everything comes crashing down. Connor is Phil Connor - one of Mike Scully's biggest helpers. Mike Scully is out of town, so he can't get Jurgis out of prison before Phil Connor finds out about it. "Bush" Harper can't afford to make Phil Connor angry. "Bush" Harper makes Jurgis this offer: "Bush" can get the bail reduced, and then Jurgis can skip town. Jurgis has three hundred dollars in the bank. "Bush" takes the whole three hundred, pays Jurgis's bail, and Jurgis gets out of jail. Jurgis has about three dollars left to his name.

Following Scully's advice, Jurgis keeps his job at Durham's. Scully wants him there because a strike is imminent. When the strike takes place, he then encourages Jurgis to be a scab and use the strike to his advantage. Jurgis is one of the few skilled men inside the plant during the strike. After a night of drinking and gambling, Jurgis encounters Connor. Again Jurgis assaults him; again Jurgis himself is beaten and taken to the police station. Although Bush Harper attempts to help Jurgis, Jurgis now finds out that Connor is one of Scully's right hand men. Harper convinces Jurgis to pay him as much money as he has so Harper can use it to pay off a man to reduce Jurgis's bail and encourages Jurgis to skip town once he is out on bail.

A strike by meat cutters and butchers actually took place in 1904. Sinclair uses this incident as the basis for his story. Combining the facts of the strike with the facts of corruption, Sinclair accurately presents life at the turn of the century in Chicago. In fact, critics and historians rarely dispute his presentation of this information. Only the accuracy of Sinclair's descriptions of the extreme working conditions and abuses presented within the meatpacking plants are consistently questioned and debated. The strike in 1904 failed for the same reasons presented in The Jungle: dishonest negotiations between management and labor, the flood of workers into the market, and the increase of product prices while the prices of raw materials are forced down. The fact that the majority of the jobs required only unskilled labor also affected the workers' chance at a decent strike settlement. During the strike, Sinclair continues his use of summary narrative, and in doing so, he presents the black scabs as if they, too, are animals, showing no insight or appreciation for black culture. Thematically, this is important because it shows the greed of the packers, who hire anyone as long as the packers themselves keep making a profit. It also shows, ironically, the similarity between the workers and the packers: Everyone is class conscious and recognizes a superior or inferior group of people based on assumptions and misinformation. Whether this view is Sinclair's own is not as clear. The omniscient narrator speaks of the blacks as a collective group, and Sinclair offers no insight into individual thoughts and feelings. Historically, at the turn of the century, the Socialist Party was not particularly interested in the well-being and advancement of African Americans. As for Jurgis, again fate intervenes, and all of his good fortune is lost due to one chance meeting with Connor. Initially, this appears to be yet another loss for the hardworking protagonist; however, this chance meeting actually enables Jurgis to discover socialism. In doing so, Jurgis realizes that socialism alone provides a way out of the capitalistic problems he has encountered throughout his life in America. Glossary arbitration the settlement of a dispute by a person or persons chosen to hear both sides and come to a decision. labyrinthine having an intricate network of winding passages hard to follow without losing one's way. pell-mell in a jumbled, confused mass or manner; without order or method. helter-skelter in a disorderly, hurried manner. kimono a loose dressing gown. smote to have struck or hit hard. Joliet referring to a prison located in the town of the same name in northeast Illinois.

Chapter 26 he blazing midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations. rivers of hot blood and carloads of moist flesh. Jurgis keeps his job as a hog trimmer. In May, the unions and the packers clash and a huge strike begins. Scully denounces the packers in the papers, so Jurgis asks for another job while he strikes with the rest. Scully tells him to be a scab and make as much as he can out of it. Jurgis argues for a wage of three dollars a day and receives it. The packers hire all of the thugs in the city and import scabs from all over the country, including a significant number of southern blacks. Jurgis is offered a position as a boss on the killing beds. The packers are desperate to provide fresh meat in order to keep public opinion from turning against them. Jurgis receives a higher wage and the promise that he will have the job after the strike. Nevertheless, the packers feel pressure from the public to settle. They reach an agreement with the union, but the packers break their promise to not discriminate against union leaders. In response, the workers return to striking. During the storm of debauchery that follows, Jurgis comes face to face with Phil Connor in Packingtown. Without thinking, he viciously attacks Connor. Jurgis calls Harper from his jail cell only to discover that Connor is one of Scully's favorites. Harper can do nothing for him except get his bail lowered so that Jurgis can pay it. He advises Jurgis to skip town. Jurgis pays his bail, which leaves him with less than four dollars, and he travels to the other end of Chicago.