During the early part of the winter the family had had money enough to
live and a little over to pay their debts with; but when the earnings of
Jurgis fell from nine or ten dollars a week to five or six, there was
no longer anything to spare. The winter went, and the spring came, and
found them still living thus from hand to mouth, hanging on day by day,
with literally not a month's wages between them and starvation. Marija
was in despair, for there was still no word about the reopening of the
canning factory, and her savings were almost entirely gone. She had had
to give up all idea of marrying then; the family could not get along
without her--though for that matter she was likely soon to become a
burden even upon them, for when her money was all gone, they would have
to pay back what they owed her in board. So Jurgis and Ona and Teta
Elzbieta would hold anxious conferences until late at night, trying to
figure how they could manage this too without starving.

Such were the cruel terms upon which their life was possible, that they
might never have nor expect a single instant's respite from worry, a
single instant in which they were not haunted by the thought of money.
They would no sooner escape, as by a miracle, from one difficulty,
than a new one would come into view. In addition to all their physical
hardships, there was thus a constant strain upon their minds; they were
harried all day and nearly all night by worry and fear. This was in
truth not living; it was scarcely even existing, and they felt that it
was too little for the price they paid. They were willing to work all
the time; and when people did their best, ought they not to be able to
keep alive?

There seemed never to be an end to the things they had to buy and to the
unforeseen contingencies. Once their water pipes froze and burst; and
when, in their ignorance, they thawed them out, they had a terrifying
flood in their house. It happened while the men were away, and poor
Elzbieta rushed out into the street screaming for help, for she did
not even know whether the flood could be stopped, or whether they were
ruined for life. It was nearly as bad as the latter, they found in
the end, for the plumber charged them seventy-five cents an hour, and
seventy-five cents for another man who had stood and watched him, and
included all the time the two had been going and coming, and also a
charge for all sorts of material and extras. And then again, when
they went to pay their January's installment on the house, the agent
terrified them by asking them if they had had the insurance attended
to yet. In answer to their inquiry he showed them a clause in the deed
which provided that they were to keep the house insured for one thousand
dollars, as soon as the present policy ran out, which would happen in
a few days. Poor Elzbieta, upon whom again fell the blow, demanded how
much it would cost them. Seven dollars, the man said; and that night
came Jurgis, grim and determined, requesting that the agent would be
good enough to inform him, once for all, as to all the expenses they
were liable for. The deed was signed now, he said, with sarcasm proper
to the new way of life he had learned--the deed was signed, and so the
agent had no longer anything to gain by keeping quiet. And Jurgis looked
the fellow squarely in the eye, and so the fellow wasted no time in
conventional protests, but read him the deed. They would have to renew
the insurance every year; they would have to pay the taxes, about ten
dollars a year; they would have to pay the water tax, about six dollars
a year--(Jurgis silently resolved to shut off the hydrant). This,
besides the interest and the monthly installments, would be all--unless
by chance the city should happen to decide to put in a sewer or to lay
a sidewalk. Yes, said the agent, they would have to have these, whether
they wanted them or not, if the city said so. The sewer would cost them
about twenty-two dollars, and the sidewalk fifteen if it were wood,
twenty-five if it were cement.

So Jurgis went home again; it was a relief to know the worst, at any
rate, so that he could no more be surprised by fresh demands. He saw
now how they had been plundered; but they were in for it, there was
no turning back. They could only go on and make the fight and win--for
defeat was a thing that could not even be thought of.

When the springtime came, they were delivered from the dreadful cold,
and that was a great deal; but in addition they had counted on the money
they would not have to pay for coal--and it was just at this time that
Marija's board began to fail. Then, too, the warm weather brought trials
of its own; each season had its trials, as they found. In the spring
there were cold rains, that turned the streets into canals and bogs; the
mud would be so deep that wagons would sink up to the hubs, so that half
a dozen horses could not move them. Then, of course, it was impossible
for any one to get to work with dry feet; and this was bad for men that
were poorly clad and shod, and still worse for women and children. Later
came midsummer, with the stifling heat, when the dingy killing beds of
Durham's became a very purgatory; one time, in a single day, three men
fell dead from sunstroke. All day long the rivers of hot blood poured
forth, until, with the sun beating down, and the air motionless,
the stench was enough to knock a man over; all the old smells of a
generation would be drawn out by this heat--for there was never any
washing of the walls and rafters and pillars, and they were caked with
the filth of a lifetime. The men who worked on the killing beds would
come to reek with foulness, so that you could smell one of them fifty
feet away; there was simply no such thing as keeping decent, the most
careful man gave it up in the end, and wallowed in uncleanness. There
was not even a place where a man could wash his hands, and the men ate
as much raw blood as food at dinnertime. When they were at work they
could not even wipe off their faces--they were as helpless as newly born
babes in that respect; and it may seem like a small matter, but when the
sweat began to run down their necks and tickle them, or a fly to bother
them, it was a torture like being burned alive. Whether it was the
slaughterhouses or the dumps that were responsible, one could not say,
but with the hot weather there descended upon Packingtown a veritable
Egyptian plague of flies; there could be no describing this--the houses
would be black with them. There was no escaping; you might provide all
your doors and windows with screens, but their buzzing outside would be
like the swarming of bees, and whenever you opened the door they would
rush in as if a storm of wind were driving them.

Perhaps the summertime suggests to you thoughts of the country, visions
of green fields and mountains and sparkling lakes. It had no such
suggestion for the people in the yards. The great packing machine ground
on remorselessly, without thinking of green fields; and the men and
women and children who were part of it never saw any green thing, not
even a flower. Four or five miles to the east of them lay the blue
waters of Lake Michigan; but for all the good it did them it might have
been as far away as the Pacific Ocean. They had only Sundays, and
then they were too tired to walk. They were tied to the great packing
machine, and tied to it for life. The managers and superintendents and
clerks of Packingtown were all recruited from another class, and never
from the workers; they scorned the workers, the very meanest of them. A
poor devil of a bookkeeper who had been working in Durham's for twenty
years at a salary of six dollars a week, and might work there for twenty
more and do no better, would yet consider himself a gentleman, as far
removed as the poles from the most skilled worker on the killing beds;
he would dress differently, and live in another part of the town, and
come to work at a different hour of the day, and in every way make sure
that he never rubbed elbows with a laboring man. Perhaps this was due to
the repulsiveness of the work; at any rate, the people who worked with
their hands were a class apart, and were made to feel it.

In the late spring the canning factory started up again, and so once
more Marija was heard to sing, and the love-music of Tamoszius took on
a less melancholy tone. It was not for long, however; for a month or two
later a dreadful calamity fell upon Marija. Just one year and three days
after she had begun work as a can-painter, she lost her job.

It was a long story. Marija insisted that it was because of her activity
in the union. The packers, of course, had spies in all the unions, and
in addition they made a practice of buying up a certain number of the
union officials, as many as they thought they needed. So every week they
received reports as to what was going on, and often they knew things
before the members of the union knew them. Any one who was considered
to be dangerous by them would find that he was not a favorite with
his boss; and Marija had been a great hand for going after the foreign
people and preaching to them. However that might be, the known facts
were that a few weeks before the factory closed, Marija had been cheated
out of her pay for three hundred cans. The girls worked at a long table,
and behind them walked a woman with pencil and notebook, keeping count
of the number they finished. This woman was, of course, only human, and
sometimes made mistakes; when this happened, there was no redress--if
on Saturday you got less money than you had earned, you had to make the
best of it. But Marija did not understand this, and made a disturbance.
Marija's disturbances did not mean anything, and while she had known
only Lithuanian and Polish, they had done no harm, for people only
laughed at her and made her cry. But now Marija was able to call names
in English, and so she got the woman who made the mistake to disliking
her. Probably, as Marija claimed, she made mistakes on purpose after
that; at any rate, she made them, and the third time it happened Marija
went on the warpath and took the matter first to the forelady, and
when she got no satisfaction there, to the superintendent. This was
unheard-of presumption, but the superintendent said he would see about
it, which Marija took to mean that she was going to get her money; after
waiting three days, she went to see the superintendent again. This time
the man frowned, and said that he had not had time to attend to it; and
when Marija, against the advice and warning of every one, tried it once
more, he ordered her back to her work in a passion. Just how things
happened after that Marija was not sure, but that afternoon the forelady
told her that her services would not be any longer required. Poor Marija
could not have been more dumfounded had the woman knocked her over the
head; at first she could not believe what she heard, and then she grew
furious and swore that she would come anyway, that her place belonged
to her. In the end she sat down in the middle of the floor and wept and
wailed.

It was a cruel lesson; but then Marija was headstrong--she should have
listened to those who had had experience. The next time she would know
her place, as the forelady expressed it; and so Marija went out, and the
family faced the problem of an existence again.

It was especially hard this time, for Ona was to be confined before
long, and Jurgis was trying hard to save up money for this. He had
heard dreadful stories of the midwives, who grow as thick as fleas
in Packingtown; and he had made up his mind that Ona must have a
man-doctor. Jurgis could be very obstinate when he wanted to, and he
was in this case, much to the dismay of the women, who felt that a
man-doctor was an impropriety, and that the matter really belonged to
them. The cheapest doctor they could find would charge them fifteen
dollars, and perhaps more when the bill came in; and here was Jurgis,
declaring that he would pay it, even if he had to stop eating in the
meantime!

Marija had only about twenty-five dollars left. Day after day she
wandered about the yards begging a job, but this time without hope of
finding it. Marija could do the work of an able-bodied man, when she
was cheerful, but discouragement wore her out easily, and she would come
home at night a pitiable object. She learned her lesson this time, poor
creature; she learned it ten times over. All the family learned it along
with her--that when you have once got a job in Packingtown, you hang on
to it, come what will.

Four weeks Marija hunted, and half of a fifth week. Of course she
stopped paying her dues to the union. She lost all interest in the
union, and cursed herself for a fool that she had ever been dragged
into one. She had about made up her mind that she was a lost soul,
when somebody told her of an opening, and she went and got a place as
a "beef-trimmer." She got this because the boss saw that she had the
muscles of a man, and so he discharged a man and put Marija to do his
work, paying her a little more than half what he had been paying before.

When she first came to Packingtown, Marija would have scorned such work
as this. She was in another canning factory, and her work was to trim
the meat of those diseased cattle that Jurgis had been told about not
long before. She was shut up in one of the rooms where the people seldom
saw the daylight; beneath her were the chilling rooms, where the meat
was frozen, and above her were the cooking rooms; and so she stood on an
ice-cold floor, while her head was often so hot that she could scarcely
breathe. Trimming beef off the bones by the hundred-weight, while
standing up from early morning till late at night, with heavy boots on
and the floor always damp and full of puddles, liable to be thrown out
of work indefinitely because of a slackening in the trade, liable again
to be kept overtime in rush seasons, and be worked till she trembled
in every nerve and lost her grip on her slimy knife, and gave herself
a poisoned wound--that was the new life that unfolded itself before
Marija. But because Marija was a human horse she merely laughed and went
at it; it would enable her to pay her board again, and keep the family
going. And as for Tamoszius--well, they had waited a long time, and they
could wait a little longer. They could not possibly get along upon his
wages alone, and the family could not live without hers. He could come
and visit her, and sit in the kitchen and hold her hand, and he must
manage to be content with that. But day by day the music of Tamoszius'
violin became more passionate and heartbreaking; and Marija would sit
with her hands clasped and her cheeks wet and all her body a-tremble,
hearing in the wailing melodies the voices of the unborn generations
which cried out in her for life.

Marija's lesson came just in time to save Ona from a similar fate.
Ona, too, was dissatisfied with her place, and had far more reason than
Marija. She did not tell half of her story at home, because she saw it
was a torment to Jurgis, and she was afraid of what he might do. For
a long time Ona had seen that Miss Henderson, the forelady in her
department, did not like her. At first she thought it was the old-time
mistake she had made in asking for a holiday to get married. Then she
concluded it must be because she did not give the forelady a present
occasionally--she was the kind that took presents from the girls, Ona
learned, and made all sorts of discriminations in favor of those who
gave them. In the end, however, Ona discovered that it was even worse
than that. Miss Henderson was a newcomer, and it was some time before
rumor made her out; but finally it transpired that she was a kept woman,
the former mistress of the superintendent of a department in the same
building. He had put her there to keep her quiet, it seemed--and that
not altogether with success, for once or twice they had been heard
quarreling. She had the temper of a hyena, and soon the place she ran
was a witch's caldron. There were some of the girls who were of her own
sort, who were willing to toady to her and flatter her; and these would
carry tales about the rest, and so the furies were unchained in the
place. Worse than this, the woman lived in a bawdy-house downtown, with
a coarse, red-faced Irishman named Connor, who was the boss of the
loading-gang outside, and would make free with the girls as they went
to and from their work. In the slack seasons some of them would go with
Miss Henderson to this house downtown--in fact, it would not be too much
to say that she managed her department at Brown's in conjunction with
it. Sometimes women from the house would be given places alongside of
decent girls, and after other decent girls had been turned off to make
room for them. When you worked in this woman's department the house
downtown was never out of your thoughts all day--there were always
whiffs of it to be caught, like the odor of the Packingtown rendering
plants at night, when the wind shifted suddenly. There would be stories
about it going the rounds; the girls opposite you would be telling them
and winking at you. In such a place Ona would not have stayed a day, but
for starvation; and, as it was, she was never sure that she could
stay the next day. She understood now that the real reason that Miss
Henderson hated her was that she was a decent married girl; and she knew
that the talebearers and the toadies hated her for the same reason, and
were doing their best to make her life miserable.

But there was no place a girl could go in Packingtown, if she was
particular about things of this sort; there was no place in it where
a prostitute could not get along better than a decent girl. Here was a
population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of
starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of
men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers;
under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable, and as
prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery. Things that
were quite unspeakable went on there in the packing houses all the time,
and were taken for granted by everybody; only they did not show, as in
the old slavery times, because there was no difference in color between
master and slave.

One morning Ona stayed home, and Jurgis had the man-doctor, according
to his whim, and she was safely delivered of a fine baby. It was an
enormous big boy, and Ona was such a tiny creature herself, that it
seemed quite incredible. Jurgis would stand and gaze at the stranger by
the hour, unable to believe that it had really happened.

The coming of this boy was a decisive event with Jurgis. It made him
irrevocably a family man; it killed the last lingering impulse that he
might have had to go out in the evenings and sit and talk with the men
in the saloons. There was nothing he cared for now so much as to sit
and look at the baby. This was very curious, for Jurgis had never been
interested in babies before. But then, this was a very unusual sort of a
baby. He had the brightest little black eyes, and little black ringlets
all over his head; he was the living image of his father, everybody
said--and Jurgis found this a fascinating circumstance. It was
sufficiently perplexing that this tiny mite of life should have come
into the world at all in the manner that it had; that it should have
come with a comical imitation of its father's nose was simply uncanny.

Perhaps, Jurgis thought, this was intended to signify that it was his
baby; that it was his and Ona's, to care for all its life. Jurgis had
never possessed anything nearly so interesting--a baby was, when you
came to think about it, assuredly a marvelous possession. It would grow
up to be a man, a human soul, with a personality all its own, a will of
its own! Such thoughts would keep haunting Jurgis, filling him with
all sorts of strange and almost painful excitements. He was wonderfully
proud of little Antanas; he was curious about all the details of
him--the washing and the dressing and the eating and the sleeping of
him, and asked all sorts of absurd questions. It took him quite a
while to get over his alarm at the incredible shortness of the little
creature's legs.

Jurgis had, alas, very little time to see his baby; he never felt the
chains about him more than just then. When he came home at night, the
baby would be asleep, and it would be the merest chance if he awoke
before Jurgis had to go to sleep himself. Then in the morning there was
no time to look at him, so really the only chance the father had was on
Sundays. This was more cruel yet for Ona, who ought to have stayed
home and nursed him, the doctor said, for her own health as well as the
baby's; but Ona had to go to work, and leave him for Teta Elzbieta
to feed upon the pale blue poison that was called milk at the corner
grocery. Ona's confinement lost her only a week's wages--she would go to
the factory the second Monday, and the best that Jurgis could persuade
her was to ride in the car, and let him run along behind and help her to
Brown's when she alighted. After that it would be all right, said Ona,
it was no strain sitting still sewing hams all day; and if she waited
longer she might find that her dreadful forelady had put some one
else in her place. That would be a greater calamity than ever now, Ona
continued, on account of the baby. They would all have to work harder
now on his account. It was such a responsibility--they must not have the
baby grow up to suffer as they had. And this indeed had been the first
thing that Jurgis had thought of himself--he had clenched his hands and
braced himself anew for the struggle, for the sake of that tiny mite of
human possibility.

And so Ona went back to Brown's and saved her place and a week's wages;
and so she gave herself some one of the thousand ailments that women
group under the title of "womb trouble," and was never again a well
person as long as she lived. It is difficult to convey in words all that
this meant to Ona; it seemed such a slight offense, and the punishment
was so out of all proportion, that neither she nor any one else ever
connected the two. "Womb trouble" to Ona did not mean a specialist's
diagnosis, and a course of treatment, and perhaps an operation or two;
it meant simply headaches and pains in the back, and depression and
heartsickness, and neuralgia when she had to go to work in the rain. The
great majority of the women who worked in Packingtown suffered in the
same way, and from the same cause, so it was not deemed a thing to see
the doctor about; instead Ona would try patent medicines, one after
another, as her friends told her about them. As these all contained
alcohol, or some other stimulant, she found that they all did her good
while she took them; and so she was always chasing the phantom of good
health, and losing it because she was too poor to continue.

The winter turns into spring, but the family does not find their economic situation any better than before. Marija still waits to hear of the re-opening of her canning factory, and she uses all but $25 of her savings. The pipes in the house burst, and the family has to pay an enormous sum for a plumber. When the family goes to pay their rent, the agent tells them that they must procure a new insurance policy on the house. Jurgis has a confrontational meeting with the man. He makes the agent clearly spell out all the costs of the house, and the sums are much larger than the family had originally thought. The spring weather brings its own trouble. There are cold rains that turn the streets to mud, and when the spring turns into summer, there are swarms of flies because of the garbage dumps. The killing-beds become unbearably hot and the men could never wash themselves of the uncleanness of the place. In the hot sun, "all the old smells of a generation would be drawn out by this heat--for there was never any washing of the walls and rafter and pillars, and they were caked with the filth of a lifetime. Marija's canning factory job hires again in the springtime, but in only a few weeks Marija loses her job. Because she was such a vocal member of the union, her forelady does not care for her and shorts her pay. Marija takes her complaints all the way to the supervisor, who becomes upset that he is bothered by a laborer. Marija is told to leave her job and not come back. It is an especially hard lesson for the family to learn this time because Ona is now pregnant and Jurgis insists that she get a "man-doctor" which costs much more than a mid-wife does. He is determined to pay for the better care, "even if he had to stop eating in the meantime. After four and a half weeks, Marija gets another job in one of the packing plants, taking the place of a man so that the foreman only has to pay her half of the wages. She is a "beef-trimmer" which means she stands in a room with no light, all day, and trims meat off bones. Though she is glad to be able to pay her board once again, she and Tamoszius despair over their inability to marry. Often, while Tamoszius plays sad music on his violin, Marija weeps over "the voices of the unborn generations which cried out in her for life. Ona has her own difficulties with her work. Her forelady, Miss Henderson, does not like Ona because she is "a decent married girl. Miss Henderson was given her position because of an affair she carries on with one of the other foremen. She also runs a brothel at which some of the girls from the packing plant work. Though Ona is disgusted by such places, she knows that for many of the women in Packingtown there is "no place a girl could go. where a prostitute could not get along better than a decent girl. Packingtown is a colony of poor, starving immigrants, all under the "whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave-drivers. Ona gives birth to a baby boy. The baby looks just like Jurgis, and Jurgis is fascinated by the new life he has created. He has little time to see his child, however, because he must work all the time to support the family. Both Ona and Jurgis decide that the baby must grow up to be more prosperous than they had been in their lives. Ona must also go back to work only a week after giving birth. This quick return to strenuous labor causes her to have "womb-trouble," which all the women of Packingtown suffer. She suffers pain in her body all day long, and only alcohol based "medicines" which give her the "phantom of good heath" give her any temporary relief

The family has barely managed to scrape by during the winter. Marija has totally given up getting married, because the family needs her too badly. She's also just about lost hope that the canning factory is going to reopen, and she has almost run through her savings. So, none of them know what is going to happen in the future. They keep getting slammed by unanticipated expenses for both home repair and taxes. Winter ends, and they think that they are at least free from the horrible cold. But every season has its own troubles: spring brings heavy rain, summer brings heat and stench from all of the blood of the slaughtered cattle - everything is filthy in Packingtown, no matter what the time of year. Marija's canning factory starts up again in the late spring, but a month or two later, Marija is suddenly fired. Marija believes that this is because she is a union member. What is more, she makes a fuss over being shortchanged on her pay. Even though all of her friends tell her to drop it, she keeps bothering the management about her money. Finally, her immediate supervisor tells Marija that she is fired. This is a really bad time for Marija to lose her job, because Ona is just about to have a baby. Jurgis is saving up money for a doctor . Marija spends a month looking for work. Finally, she finds it: a man hires her to trim the meat of diseased cattle so that it can be reprocessed for canning. Her new boss hires her because he sees how muscular Marija is. He fires the guy who had the job before and then hires Marija for about half the cost. Marija has really been brought low - she would never have done this kind of hard, stinking work when she first arrived in Chicago. She also keeps postponing her marriage to Tamoszius, even though they are both eager to get hitched. Ona is also having work troubles. Her boss hates Ona, and Ona can't figure out why. Eventually, Ona hears from the other girls that Ona's boss, Miss Henderson, was once the mistress of one of the superintendents. They are no longer sleeping together, but he gave Miss Henderson this job at the meatpacking plant to keep her quiet. Miss Henderson has close ties to a brothel downtown, and a lot of the girls who work for her are also former prostitutes. The reason Miss Henderson hates Ona is because Ona is a "decent married girl" . Miss Henderson resents Ona's purity. One morning, Ona gives birth to a healthy baby boy. They name him Antanas. Jurgis scarcely gets to see his baby, even though he adores him, because he absolutely has to work. Ona has to work, too - in fact, she goes back to Brown's factory a week after giving birth. They leave Baby Antanas in the care of Teta Elzbieta, who feeds him watered down milk from the local grocery store. The two of them work even harder so that they can give Baby Antanas a better life than either of them have had. Yet, in going straight back to work after giving birth, Ona has damaged her health: it's unclear what exactly she has , but she basically never recovers from the childbirth.

Each season brings a new catastrophe, forcing Jurgis and his family to fight just to barely survive. In the spring they learn that in addition to the mortgage and the taxes, they have to pay insurance on their property. The messy spring rain gives way to the stifling summer heat. Marija gets her job back when the factory re-opens, only to lose it due to her union activity. Ona is pregnant, so it is imperative for Marija to find a new job. She reluctantly accepts work as a beef trimmer, a job she would have refused earlier. Ona discovers that her boss operates a brothel downtown and many decent girls lose their positions at the factory to prostitutes. Jurgis insists on having a male doctor instead of a midwife when Ona gives birth to their son, who is named Antanas -- after the child's grandfather, Dede Antanas. Jurgis is unable to see much of his son because of the long hours he works, and Ona must return to work after missing only a week, in order not to lose her position. Ona, who has never been very strong or healthy, never fully recovers from this experience and suffers for the rest of her days with the same ailments that affect most of the factory women, for all women return to work too quickly after giving birth to fully recover.

Chapter 10 reads as a case history of abuse. Sinclair provides neither action nor dialogue. Life continues to be extremely difficult, but Jurgis can do nothing to change this. The one bright spot in Jurgis' life is the birth of his son. Marija lands a job as beef trimmer, making half the amount of the man she replaces. Her character, possessing the "muscles of a man," continues to contrast with Ona, a weak woman who grows weaker after the birth of her son. Ona's weakened condition continues throughout the remainder of the book, foreshadowing her untimely death. Forced to return to work one week after giving birth, Ona is not able to be a mother to her child. This illustrates the destructive force capitalism is on the family unit. Because he must work long hours on the killing floor, Jurgis is unable to be a father to his child. In fact, he seldom sees little Antanas. According to Sinclair, the very nature of capitalism threatens the integrity of the family. Sinclair also uses a seemingly throwaway line, "she  did not tell half of her story at home" to foreshadow the fate not only of Ona but of Marija -- their forced prostitution. Another important, naturalistic theme states that a technological society drives women to prostitution. Both strong and weak women eventually turn to the oldest profession -- satisfying the carnal whims of men -- in order to make the money necessary to keep their families together. Women do not turn to prostitution because they want to, but because they're forced to. Glossary bog wet spongy ground, characterized by decaying mosses that form peat; a small marsh or swamp. purgatory a state or place in which, in Roman Catholicism and other Christian doctrine, those who have died in the grace of God expiate their sins by suffering. furies in Greek and Roman mythology, the three terrible female spirits with snaky hair who punish the doers of unavenged crimes. bawdyhouse a house of prostitution.

Chapter 10 population. dependent for its opportunities. upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers. Jurgis demands that the agent who sold his family the house reveal all of its hidden expenses. The agent explains that they must pay seven dollars a year for insurance, ten dollars a year in taxes, and six dollars a year for water. He adds that if the city chooses to install a sewer and a sidewalk, they would have to pay between thirty-seven and forty-seven dollars. Spring arrives and with it come frequent cold rains and mud. In the summer, the factories are infernos. Moreover, legions of flies descend on Packingtown, attracted by the blood and meat. Marija regains her job at the can painting factory, only to lose it two months later. She is fired when she vocally protests being cheated out of a portion of her wages. The loss of her income is devastating to the family because Ona is now expecting Jurgis's child. It takes Marija a month to find work as a beef trimmer. The boss hires her because she is as strong as a man while her wages are half of a man's. Ona's supervisor, Miss Henderson, the superintendent's jilted mistress, runs a brothel. Her prostitutes get jobs easily in Ona's department. She hates Ona because she is a decent married woman and her toadies make Ona miserable. Ona gives birth to a healthy boy. She and Jurgis name him Antanas after Jurgis's father. Jurgis is seized with an overpowering affection for his child and his commitment to his role as a family man grows in consequence. But his long work hours prevent him from seeing his son very much. Ona returns to work a week after giving birth, and her health suffers badly

In Packingtown, not even the arrival of spring brings cheer to the worker's life. Every season brings with it cause for suffering, which is as relentless as time itself in the wage laborer's world. These chapters illustrate the precarious existence of wage laborers--they are always on the verge of a financial crisis. The injury that incapacitates Jurgis is enough to upset the entire household's stability, forcing others to assume the burden of earning income. The world that Sinclair portrays is remarkably Darwinian, as Jurgis and his family are running a losing race for survival. The conditions of life for them are so harsh that mere survival is considered a success. The weak, the crippled, and the old are weeded out with brutal efficiency. Capitalists such as those who ran the Chicago stockyards in the early twentieth century often justified brutal labor practices with a philosophy known as Social Darwinism. This philosophy adapts Darwin's theory of evolution to economic struggle, implying that, as in nature, only the fittest and the strongest are meant to survive. According to Social Darwinism, wealthy capitalists were considered the fittest of the human race because they were so successful. The wage laboring class was considered an inferior form of humanity. The widespread racism and prejudice against immigrants helped this belief gain power and influence in turn-of-the-century American culture. By attributing Jurgis with a strong physique and an initially enthusiastic attitude, Sinclair tries to demonstrate the fiction of Social Darwinism. Capitalism ruins strong, healthy individuals as well as the crippled, the weak, and the old. Only those who are morally corrupt, it seems, survive. Marija's fear about being weighed down into the mud by her money is a metaphor for the evils of capitalism. Sinclair argues that this system of greed oppresses individuals; here, Marija's coins are a concretized form of money that physically oppresses her. The unassailable primacy of money has conditioned her to guard her money with her life. Marija's quasi-religious devotion to her coins seems to recall Jesus' admonition, according to the New Testament that "t is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" . Though she clutches the money not because she is greedy but because she needs it to survive, Marija has been distorted by capitalism into an un-Christian figure, descending into the mud of base desire. Throughout these chapters, Sinclair accuses capitalism of undermining the family. Ona has to return to work a mere week after giving birth. She doesn't have the opportunity to be a mother to her child. Almost everyone is happy when the crippled Kristoforas dies because, from a reasoning, mathematical point of view--which is indeed the lens through which these immigrants must examine their lives--the child is a drain on the family's resources, a consumer without being a producer. Jurgis's long work hours prevent the development of a strong bond with his son. The desperate need for sustenance takes priority over sympathy and love, as evidenced by Jurgis's beating of the frostbitten Stanislovas. Jurgis and his family's poverty, a result of capitalist economics, prevent them from being together as a family. Jonas even disappears without warning; it is possible that he dies while at work, but it is more likely that he simply abandons the family, which has deteriorated into a collection of individuals struggling to eke out an existence. Within the capitalist system, families are a burden best avoided if a single individual wishes to survive.


During the summer the packing houses were in full activity again, and
Jurgis made more money. He did not make so much, however, as he had the
previous summer, for the packers took on more hands. There were new men
every week, it seemed--it was a regular system; and this number they
would keep over to the next slack season, so that every one would have
less than ever. Sooner or later, by this plan, they would have all the
floating labor of Chicago trained to do their work. And how very cunning
a trick was that! The men were to teach new hands, who would some day
come and break their strike; and meantime they were kept so poor that
they could not prepare for the trial!

But let no one suppose that this superfluity of employees meant easier
work for any one! On the contrary, the speeding-up seemed to be growing
more savage all the time; they were continually inventing new devices to
crowd the work on--it was for all the world like the thumbscrew of the
medieval torture chamber. They would get new pacemakers and pay them
more; they would drive the men on with new machinery--it was said
that in the hog-killing rooms the speed at which the hogs moved was
determined by clockwork, and that it was increased a little every day.
In piecework they would reduce the time, requiring the same work in a
shorter time, and paying the same wages; and then, after the workers had
accustomed themselves to this new speed, they would reduce the rate of
payment to correspond with the reduction in time! They had done this
so often in the canning establishments that the girls were fairly
desperate; their wages had gone down by a full third in the past two
years, and a storm of discontent was brewing that was likely to break
any day. Only a month after Marija had become a beef-trimmer the canning
factory that she had left posted a cut that would divide the girls'
earnings almost squarely in half; and so great was the indignation at
this that they marched out without even a parley, and organized in the
street outside. One of the girls had read somewhere that a red flag was
the proper symbol for oppressed workers, and so they mounted one, and
paraded all about the yards, yelling with rage. A new union was the
result of this outburst, but the impromptu strike went to pieces in
three days, owing to the rush of new labor. At the end of it the girl
who had carried the red flag went downtown and got a position in a great
department store, at a salary of two dollars and a half a week.

Jurgis and Ona heard these stories with dismay, for there was no telling
when their own time might come. Once or twice there had been rumors
that one of the big houses was going to cut its unskilled men to fifteen
cents an hour, and Jurgis knew that if this was done, his turn would
come soon. He had learned by this time that Packingtown was really not
a number of firms at all, but one great firm, the Beef Trust. And every
week the managers of it got together and compared notes, and there
was one scale for all the workers in the yards and one standard of
efficiency. Jurgis was told that they also fixed the price they would
pay for beef on the hoof and the price of all dressed meat in the
country; but that was something he did not understand or care about.

The only one who was not afraid of a cut was Marija, who congratulated
herself, somewhat naively, that there had been one in her place only
a short time before she came. Marija was getting to be a skilled
beef-trimmer, and was mounting to the heights again. During the summer
and fall Jurgis and Ona managed to pay her back the last penny they
owed her, and so she began to have a bank account. Tamoszius had a bank
account also, and they ran a race, and began to figure upon household
expenses once more.

The possession of vast wealth entails cares and responsibilities,
however, as poor Marija found out. She had taken the advice of a friend
and invested her savings in a bank on Ashland Avenue. Of course she knew
nothing about it, except that it was big and imposing--what possible
chance has a poor foreign working girl to understand the banking
business, as it is conducted in this land of frenzied finance? So Marija
lived in a continual dread lest something should happen to her bank, and
would go out of her way mornings to make sure that it was still there.
Her principal thought was of fire, for she had deposited her money in
bills, and was afraid that if they were burned up the bank would not
give her any others. Jurgis made fun of her for this, for he was a man
and was proud of his superior knowledge, telling her that the bank had
fireproof vaults, and all its millions of dollars hidden safely away in
them.

However, one morning Marija took her usual detour, and, to her horror
and dismay, saw a crowd of people in front of the bank, filling the
avenue solid for half a block. All the blood went out of her face for
terror. She broke into a run, shouting to the people to ask what was the
matter, but not stopping to hear what they answered, till she had come
to where the throng was so dense that she could no longer advance. There
was a "run on the bank," they told her then, but she did not know what
that was, and turned from one person to another, trying in an agony
of fear to make out what they meant. Had something gone wrong with the
bank? Nobody was sure, but they thought so. Couldn't she get her money?
There was no telling; the people were afraid not, and they were all
trying to get it. It was too early yet to tell anything--the bank would
not open for nearly three hours. So in a frenzy of despair Marija began
to claw her way toward the doors of this building, through a throng of
men, women, and children, all as excited as herself. It was a scene of
wild confusion, women shrieking and wringing their hands and fainting,
and men fighting and trampling down everything in their way. In
the midst of the melee Marija recollected that she did not have her
bankbook, and could not get her money anyway, so she fought her way out
and started on a run for home. This was fortunate for her, for a few
minutes later the police reserves arrived.

In half an hour Marija was back, Teta Elzbieta with her, both of them
breathless with running and sick with fear. The crowd was now formed
in a line, extending for several blocks, with half a hundred policemen
keeping guard, and so there was nothing for them to do but to take their
places at the end of it. At nine o'clock the bank opened and began to
pay the waiting throng; but then, what good did that do Marija, who saw
three thousand people before her--enough to take out the last penny of a
dozen banks?

To make matters worse a drizzling rain came up, and soaked them to the
skin; yet all the morning they stood there, creeping slowly toward the
goal--all the afternoon they stood there, heartsick, seeing that the
hour of closing was coming, and that they were going to be left out.
Marija made up her mind that, come what might, she would stay there and
keep her place; but as nearly all did the same, all through the long,
cold night, she got very little closer to the bank for that. Toward
evening Jurgis came; he had heard the story from the children, and he
brought some food and dry wraps, which made it a little easier.

The next morning, before daybreak, came a bigger crowd than ever, and
more policemen from downtown. Marija held on like grim death, and toward
afternoon she got into the bank and got her money--all in big silver
dollars, a handkerchief full. When she had once got her hands on them
her fear vanished, and she wanted to put them back again; but the man
at the window was savage, and said that the bank would receive no more
deposits from those who had taken part in the run. So Marija was forced
to take her dollars home with her, watching to right and left, expecting
every instant that some one would try to rob her; and when she got home
she was not much better off. Until she could find another bank there was
nothing to do but sew them up in her clothes, and so Marija went about
for a week or more, loaded down with bullion, and afraid to cross the
street in front of the house, because Jurgis told her she would sink out
of sight in the mud. Weighted this way she made her way to the
yards, again in fear, this time to see if she had lost her place; but
fortunately about ten per cent of the working people of Packingtown had
been depositors in that bank, and it was not convenient to discharge
that many at once. The cause of the panic had been the attempt of a
policeman to arrest a drunken man in a saloon next door, which had drawn
a crowd at the hour the people were on their way to work, and so started
the "run."

About this time Jurgis and Ona also began a bank account. Besides having
paid Jonas and Marija, they had almost paid for their furniture, and
could have that little sum to count on. So long as each of them could
bring home nine or ten dollars a week, they were able to get along
finely. Also election day came round again, and Jurgis made half a
week's wages out of that, all net profit. It was a very close election
that year, and the echoes of the battle reached even to Packingtown. The
two rival sets of grafters hired halls and set off fireworks and made
speeches, to try to get the people interested in the matter. Although
Jurgis did not understand it all, he knew enough by this time to realize
that it was not supposed to be right to sell your vote. However, as
every one did it, and his refusal to join would not have made the
slightest difference in the results, the idea of refusing would have
seemed absurd, had it ever come into his head.

Now chill winds and shortening days began to warn them that the winter
was coming again. It seemed as if the respite had been too short--they
had not had time enough to get ready for it; but still it came,
inexorably, and the hunted look began to come back into the eyes of
little Stanislovas. The prospect struck fear to the heart of Jurgis
also, for he knew that Ona was not fit to face the cold and the
snowdrifts this year. And suppose that some day when a blizzard struck
them and the cars were not running, Ona should have to give up, and
should come the next day to find that her place had been given to some
one who lived nearer and could be depended on?

It was the week before Christmas that the first storm came, and then the
soul of Jurgis rose up within him like a sleeping lion. There were four
days that the Ashland Avenue cars were stalled, and in those days,
for the first time in his life, Jurgis knew what it was to be really
opposed. He had faced difficulties before, but they had been child's
play; now there was a death struggle, and all the furies were unchained
within him. The first morning they set out two hours before dawn, Ona
wrapped all in blankets and tossed upon his shoulder like a sack of
meal, and the little boy, bundled nearly out of sight, hanging by
his coat-tails. There was a raging blast beating in his face, and the
thermometer stood below zero; the snow was never short of his knees, and
in some of the drifts it was nearly up to his armpits. It would catch
his feet and try to trip him; it would build itself into a wall before
him to beat him back; and he would fling himself into it, plunging like
a wounded buffalo, puffing and snorting in rage. So foot by foot he
drove his way, and when at last he came to Durham's he was staggering
and almost blind, and leaned against a pillar, gasping, and thanking God
that the cattle came late to the killing beds that day. In the evening
the same thing had to be done again; and because Jurgis could not tell
what hour of the night he would get off, he got a saloon-keeper to let
Ona sit and wait for him in a corner. Once it was eleven o'clock at
night, and black as the pit, but still they got home.

That blizzard knocked many a man out, for the crowd outside begging for
work was never greater, and the packers would not wait long for any
one. When it was over, the soul of Jurgis was a song, for he had met
the enemy and conquered, and felt himself the master of his fate.--So it
might be with some monarch of the forest that has vanquished his foes in
fair fight, and then falls into some cowardly trap in the night-time.

A time of peril on the killing beds was when a steer broke loose.
Sometimes, in the haste of speeding-up, they would dump one of the
animals out on the floor before it was fully stunned, and it would get
upon its feet and run amuck. Then there would be a yell of warning--the
men would drop everything and dash for the nearest pillar, slipping
here and there on the floor, and tumbling over each other. This was bad
enough in the summer, when a man could see; in wintertime it was enough
to make your hair stand up, for the room would be so full of steam that
you could not make anything out five feet in front of you. To be sure,
the steer was generally blind and frantic, and not especially bent on
hurting any one; but think of the chances of running upon a knife, while
nearly every man had one in his hand! And then, to cap the climax, the
floor boss would come rushing up with a rifle and begin blazing away!

It was in one of these melees that Jurgis fell into his trap. That is
the only word to describe it; it was so cruel, and so utterly not to
be foreseen. At first he hardly noticed it, it was such a slight
accident--simply that in leaping out of the way he turned his ankle.
There was a twinge of pain, but Jurgis was used to pain, and did not
coddle himself. When he came to walk home, however, he realized that it
was hurting him a great deal; and in the morning his ankle was swollen
out nearly double its size, and he could not get his foot into his shoe.
Still, even then, he did nothing more than swear a little, and wrapped
his foot in old rags, and hobbled out to take the car. It chanced to be
a rush day at Durham's, and all the long morning he limped about with
his aching foot; by noontime the pain was so great that it made him
faint, and after a couple of hours in the afternoon he was fairly
beaten, and had to tell the boss. They sent for the company doctor, and
he examined the foot and told Jurgis to go home to bed, adding that he
had probably laid himself up for months by his folly. The injury was not
one that Durham and Company could be held responsible for, and so that
was all there was to it, so far as the doctor was concerned.

Jurgis got home somehow, scarcely able to see for the pain, and with an
awful terror in his soul, Elzbieta helped him into bed and bandaged
his injured foot with cold water and tried hard not to let him see her
dismay; when the rest came home at night she met them outside and told
them, and they, too, put on a cheerful face, saying it would only be for
a week or two, and that they would pull him through.

When they had gotten him to sleep, however, they sat by the kitchen fire
and talked it over in frightened whispers. They were in for a siege,
that was plainly to be seen. Jurgis had only about sixty dollars in the
bank, and the slack season was upon them. Both Jonas and Marija might
soon be earning no more than enough to pay their board, and besides that
there were only the wages of Ona and the pittance of the little boy.
There was the rent to pay, and still some on the furniture; there was
the insurance just due, and every month there was sack after sack
of coal. It was January, midwinter, an awful time to have to face
privation. Deep snows would come again, and who would carry Ona to her
work now? She might lose her place--she was almost certain to lose it.
And then little Stanislovas began to whimper--who would take care of
him?

It was dreadful that an accident of this sort, that no man can help,
should have meant such suffering. The bitterness of it was the daily
food and drink of Jurgis. It was of no use for them to try to deceive
him; he knew as much about the situation as they did, and he knew that
the family might literally starve to death. The worry of it fairly ate
him up--he began to look haggard the first two or three days of it. In
truth, it was almost maddening for a strong man like him, a fighter, to
have to lie there helpless on his back. It was for all the world the
old story of Prometheus bound. As Jurgis lay on his bed, hour after hour
there came to him emotions that he had never known before. Before this
he had met life with a welcome--it had its trials, but none that a man
could not face. But now, in the nighttime, when he lay tossing about,
there would come stalking into his chamber a grisly phantom, the sight
of which made his flesh curl and his hair to bristle up. It was like
seeing the world fall away from underneath his feet; like plunging down
into a bottomless abyss into yawning caverns of despair. It might be
true, then, after all, what others had told him about life, that the
best powers of a man might not be equal to it! It might be true that,
strive as he would, toil as he would, he might fail, and go down and be
destroyed! The thought of this was like an icy hand at his heart; the
thought that here, in this ghastly home of all horror, he and all those
who were dear to him might lie and perish of starvation and cold, and
there would be no ear to hear their cry, no hand to help them! It was
true, it was true,--that here in this huge city, with its stores of
heaped-up wealth, human creatures might be hunted down and destroyed by
the wild-beast powers of nature, just as truly as ever they were in the
days of the cave men!

Ona was now making about thirty dollars a month, and Stanislovas about
thirteen. To add to this there was the board of Jonas and Marija,
about forty-five dollars. Deducting from this the rent, interest,
and installments on the furniture, they had left sixty dollars, and
deducting the coal, they had fifty. They did without everything that
human beings could do without; they went in old and ragged clothing,
that left them at the mercy of the cold, and when the children's shoes
wore out, they tied them up with string. Half invalid as she was, Ona
would do herself harm by walking in the rain and cold when she ought
to have ridden; they bought literally nothing but food--and still they
could not keep alive on fifty dollars a month. They might have done it,
if only they could have gotten pure food, and at fair prices; or if only
they had known what to get--if they had not been so pitifully ignorant!
But they had come to a new country, where everything was different,
including the food. They had always been accustomed to eat a great deal
of smoked sausage, and how could they know that what they bought in
America was not the same--that its color was made by chemicals, and its
smoky flavor by more chemicals, and that it was full of "potato flour"
besides? Potato flour is the waste of potato after the starch and
alcohol have been extracted; it has no more food value than so much
wood, and as its use as a food adulterant is a penal offense in Europe,
thousands of tons of it are shipped to America every year. It was
amazing what quantities of food such as this were needed every day, by
eleven hungry persons. A dollar sixty-five a day was simply not enough
to feed them, and there was no use trying; and so each week they made an
inroad upon the pitiful little bank account that Ona had begun. Because
the account was in her name, it was possible for her to keep this a
secret from her husband, and to keep the heartsickness of it for her
own.

It would have been better if Jurgis had been really ill; if he had not
been able to think. For he had no resources such as most invalids have;
all he could do was to lie there and toss about from side to side. Now
and then he would break into cursing, regardless of everything; and now
and then his impatience would get the better of him, and he would try to
get up, and poor Teta Elzbieta would have to plead with him in a frenzy.
Elzbieta was all alone with him the greater part of the time. She would
sit and smooth his forehead by the hour, and talk to him and try to make
him forget. Sometimes it would be too cold for the children to go to
school, and they would have to play in the kitchen, where Jurgis was,
because it was the only room that was half warm. These were dreadful
times, for Jurgis would get as cross as any bear; he was scarcely to
be blamed, for he had enough to worry him, and it was hard when he was
trying to take a nap to be kept awake by noisy and peevish children.

Elzbieta's only resource in those times was little Antanas; indeed, it
would be hard to say how they could have gotten along at all if it had
not been for little Antanas. It was the one consolation of Jurgis' long
imprisonment that now he had time to look at his baby. Teta Elzbieta
would put the clothes-basket in which the baby slept alongside of his
mattress, and Jurgis would lie upon one elbow and watch him by the
hour, imagining things. Then little Antanas would open his eyes--he was
beginning to take notice of things now; and he would smile--how he would
smile! So Jurgis would begin to forget and be happy because he was in
a world where there was a thing so beautiful as the smile of little
Antanas, and because such a world could not but be good at the heart of
it. He looked more like his father every hour, Elzbieta would say, and
said it many times a day, because she saw that it pleased Jurgis; the
poor little terror-stricken woman was planning all day and all night
to soothe the prisoned giant who was intrusted to her care. Jurgis, who
knew nothing about the age-long and everlasting hypocrisy of woman, would
take the bait and grin with delight; and then he would hold his finger
in front of little Antanas' eyes, and move it this way and that, and
laugh with glee to see the baby follow it. There is no pet quite so
fascinating as a baby; he would look into Jurgis' face with such uncanny
seriousness, and Jurgis would start and cry: "Palauk! Look, Muma, he
knows his papa! He does, he does! Tu mano szirdele, the little rascal!"

The packinghouses hire more men during the summer months, but they pay each one less. This is so that if some of the men go on strike, the others will be trained to take their places. Thus, Jurgis has more work but brings home less pay. For the women, their wages decrease by a third, and there are rumors that they will be cut further. Marija is indignant over this slight in pay, and she organizes some of the other women to walk away from their jobs. They strike outside, waving a red flag , but the strike breaks in three days because there are so many people without jobs. Marija advances in her beef cutting skills, however, and soon is making enough money to open a bank account. Marija puts all her money in a bank on Ashland Avenue. She lives "in continual dread lest something should happen to her bank," and she often goes by each morning to make sure the bank is still in business. She is mostly worried about fire. She is worried that if the bank burns, her paper bills will burn with it, but Jurgis laughs at her and tries to explain that is not how banks work. One morning on her way to work, Marija sees a large crowd gathered outside her bank. Panicking, she asks numerous people about the situation. They tell her there is a "run on the bank," and everyone is attempting to withdraw their money at once because they are afraid that the bank is going to fail. Marija begins to claw and fight her way through the crowd, but realizes she does not have her bankbook and so she has to go back home to collect it. When she returns, the line to get into the bank extends for several blocks. Marija worries that there will be no more money left when she is finally able to get inside. Marija waits in the line overnight. Jurgis brings her food and blankets. The next morning, even more people arrive, as well as the police. That afternoon, she finally makes it inside and collects her money, all in silver dollars. She immediately feels better and asks the man if she can redeposit the money, but he tells her savagely that the bank is not accepting deposits from anyone participating in the run. For the next week she goes everywhere with the big silver dollars sewn into her clothes so that no one can steal them. She does not lose her job because ten percent of the people of Packingtown did not come to work that day as they were also trying to get their money from the bank. Marija finds out that a fight that occurred at a saloon next door caused the run on the bank. People gathered around the bank to watch the fight. Other people assumed something was wrong at the bank, and panic spread and caused the run. The summer turns into fall, which again brings winter. Jurgis knows that Ona cannot face another hard winter, which means she might have to give up her job. A blizzard comes to Chicago on the week before Christmas of that year and "for the first time in his life, Jurgis what it was to be really opposed. He has a very difficult time even getting to work and when he arrives, he is staggering and almost blind from the snow. He does not lose his job that day, however, because the cattle are late getting to the killing floors. One day, on the killing floor, a steer breaks loose of its chains. It is a dangerous situation because men scatter everywhere, all with big knives in their hands. Jurgis scrambles away from the steer and his foot becomes caught in the trap that collects the blood. He twists his ankle. He does not notice the injury at first, but it becomes worse throughout the day. The next day, his ankle is swollen and he wraps it in rags and goes to work anyway. It begins to hurt so badly that he passes out. A company doctor sees him and tells Jurgis that he must go home and go to bed. It could be months before the ankle properly heals. Jurgis is devastated by his inability to work, and the family is secretly frightened. Jurgis often tries to get out of bed and go to work, but Teta Elzbieta cares for him and makes sure he does not leave the bed. It is hard on the family because they cannot even get proper nutrition. They eat large amounts of sausage made with chemicals and potato-flour, "the waste of potato after the starch and alcohol have been extracted. Because Jurgis still has a clear mind and can think, he becomes progressively more upset over his situation. The only thing that helps him cope is holding little Antanas and seeing him grow up

In Chapter Eleven, Sinclair wages his criticism upon another institutional mechanism of capitalism, the banks. In describing "the run" on Marija's bank, Sinclair is noting the way in which laissez-faire monetary policies create difficult situations in which even poor people are at risk in losing all of their money through no fault of their own. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American banks were subject to great volatility. There were several notable "runs" on banks, or panics in which all the bank's depositors attempted to withdraw their money. If there is not enough money on hand , some depositors are at risk of losing their money if the bank fails. This kind of panic was responsible for causing the Great Depression in the 1930s. By telling this story, and by noting how the panic is falsely caused by a bar fight, Sinclair is critiquing the way in which lax regulation works against common people even in institutions that should be safe havens for people's money. This part of the novel also follows Jurgis as he is first broken down by the weather, once again a metaphor for the larger social and economic systems of oppression, and then broken physically by an accident on the killing floor. These two events, which cause him to sprain his ankle and which keep him from work for over two months, are the first real hardships that Jurgis had ever gone through in his life. While it is not explained as to whether such hardships in America are actually worse than hardships in Eastern Europe, the physicality of the hardships describes a further descent into the hell of Packingtown. Thus, the demise of the body becomes a place of descent into suffering. The destruction of the family is first described here as well. Jurgis and his family came to America with hopes of education and a better life for their children. This dream is shattered when the children must go to work. This is an example of the way in which forces of Social Darwinism deconstruct the meaning of family during this period of industrialization. The historical belief in the patriarchal family structure is destroyed as the children must enter the social "jungle" that bears the name of the novel. These children are subjected to the same hardships that their parents are subjected to and must map out their own methods to cope with such systems of oppression. These methods include not paying their fares on the trolley, a crime they justify. Those children, such as little Kristoforas, that cannot find ways to manipulate the system do not survive. In this "jungle" of society, only the fittest survive. As an employee at the fertilizer plant, Jurgis reaches his lowest point as a character. By becoming covered in animal waste and feces, his body becomes the center of suffering in the novel. Jurgis and his family had been social outcasts, as are the other residents of Packingtown, but Jurgis's job in the fertilizer plant now makes him a physical outcast in Packingtown. It can be argued that, in this way, Jurgis represents a Christ-figure in the novel. This figure undergoes intense persecution and physical harm, even to the point of death, in order to attain some kind of redemption or resurrection at the novel's conclusion. The scene in which Teta Elzbieta goes to work in the sausage factory is another example of how the meatpacking plants force a dehumanization of the novel's characters. In this scene, Sinclair uses a literary technique in showing how the women who make sausage links are dehumanized and described as if they themselves are the meat. They take on the color of the sausage. Their lives have no more meaning or significance than do the sausage links they make and tie. In this way, Sinclair poses the nameless women as pieces of meat themselves; they are nothing but a product that the meat industry consumes and disregards.

Work picks up for Jurgis in the summer, but he's not making as much money because the factories have hired even more cheap labor. This increase in the number of employees doesn't make the work any easier. Instead, the packing company seems to be insisting on faster and faster paces of work. The canning company Marija used to work at has sped up the pace of the work so often that her friends are really struggling. The day that canning company announced a 50% reduction in pay across the board, all of the working girls marched straight outside and protested. The strike fell apart quickly when the canning company brought in new workers, so it didn't bring about any real change. Jurgis and Ona both worry that this will happen to them, too. They have realized that, what one company does in Packingtown, all companies will eventually do in Packingtown. Marija is the only one who doesn't worry. Jurgis and Ona have paid her back what she loaned them from her savings when they first arrived in the States. Marija decides to put this money in a bank account. She and Tamoszius start planning again. Marija does worry that something will happen at the bank to destroy her cash. One morning, as she walks to work, she sees a big crowd of people in front of the bank. They are all people with deposits in the bank, and they are worried that there is some problem, and that they won't be able to get their cash. So, they are all waiting until the bank opens to withdraw all of their funds. Marija waits for two days in bad weather, accompanied by Teta Elzbieta, so that she can withdraw all of her money. Finally, Marija walks out with her savings. She sews her money into the lining of her dress until she can find a new bank to invest it in. Jurgis and Ona also have enough money to start a bank account. As long as their wages keep coming in steadily, they are fine. Jurgis also has the opportunity to sell his vote once again, so that's a little cash for the coffers. Winter is coming again and Jurgis is worried for Ona. He is concerned that she will not be able to stand the cold. So Jurgis has to accompany both Ona and little Stanislovas to work, carrying them through the snowdrifts. It's during this snowy winter season that disaster strikes . Occasionally at the factory, a steer will break lose from the chain holding it upside down. In a panic, it will rush around and generally be a danger to the laborers on the killing floor. This happens one day to Jurgis. He jumps out of the way without realizing that he has bent his ankle in the wrong direction. The pain in his ankle grows steadily throughout the day, until he faints from the pain. A company doctor comes to examine Jurgis and tells him that he should go home and rest up. The doctor warns Jurgis that he will probably have to stay off that foot for months to heal it. Jurgis is terrified. He limps home, and Teta Elzbieta wraps the foot and puts him to bed. After Jurgis sleeps, they talk over what they are going to do. Jurgis only has $60 saved, and the off-season for the slaughterhouses is coming. It's January, so taxes are coming up; there is also the monthly cost for coal until the weather warms up. Ona and Stanislovas both worry about who will bring them through the snow to work now. As Jurgis lies in bed, he frets that his family is going to starve to death without him. For the first time, he really starts to realize that he might not be strong enough to stand between them and complete disaster. So the family has no choice: they scrape and pinch and do without newer clothes that would keep them warm and new shoes without holes in them. The only thing they buy is food, and the food they buy isn't very nourishing. Because Jurgis is only lying in bed because his ankle hurts - it's not like his brain is sick - he spends all of his time thinking over their troubles. This makes him incredibly grumpy and difficult to be around. Teta Elzbieta tries to soothe Jurgis by talking to him about the old country and bringing him the baby, Antanas.

Although Jurgis is working harder than ever, the process of "speeding up," the hiring of more workers, and a reduction in wages earn him a net loss income. At this time Jurgis learns that all the packers, a term used to refer to the owners and management, conspire together in something known as the Beef Trust. Marija cares little for this and worries only about herself. She opens a savings account, but is extremely leery of the entire banking system. Panic and an ensuing bank run causes her to miss two days of work to withdraw her money. The run ends up having nothing to do with the bank. Before they know it, winter has returned again, and the family feels utterly unprepared. Jurgis takes control of the situation as best he can, escorting Ona and carrying Stanislovas to work. Unfortunately, Jurgis sprains his ankle and misses three weeks of work. During this time Ona, unbeknownst to Jurgis, must borrow from their meager savings in order to survive. The only solace Jurgis finds during this difficult time is spending time with his son.

Two important themes dominate Chapter 11. The first states that accidents determine fate. Through no fault of his own, Jurgis is out of work for three weeks. It is an accident that he sprains his ankle, but nonetheless, his entire family suffers for it. One financial crisis follows another, all independent of each other and each seemingly more calamitous than the previous one. A related theme demonstrates that a willingness to work is not always enough. From the onset, Jurgis' motto has been "I will work harder." He has been working harder and harder, but realizing his goals less and less. The corrupt nature of the meatpacking industry stacks the deck against him and all hard workers, for the only ones reaping the benefits of increased work levels are the owners. A comparison to Lithuania in this chapter is in the food they eat: In the forest, they ate real sausage; here they ingest imitation filler. Once again, the old cliche about "the grass is always greener" comes true. Jurgis and his family did not recognize the advantages and benefits of what they had in Lithuania. As the months pass by and election time rolls around, Jurgis realizes that selling his vote to the democrats is unethical, but he does it anyway. His attitude is not one of indifference but rather of survival. It really does not matter whether he sells his vote or not, because the democrats will win. But if this opportunity presents a chance for Jurgis to help his family, the ends justify the means. When ethics battles economics, economics wins every time. Glossary superfluity a quantity or number beyond what is needed. inexorably relentlessly; unalterable. Prometheus in Greek mythology, a Titan who steals fire from heaven for the benefit of mankind. To punish him, Zeus chains him to a rock where a vulture comes each day to eat his liver, which grows back each night.

The Packingtown laborers are worked at an ever greater speed only to see their wages cut numerous times. Marija opens a bank account for her savings. One morning she discovers that there is a run on the bank. She waits for two days in the line before she can withdraw her money. In truth, her fear is unfounded: an attempt by a policeman to arrest a drunk at the saloon next to the bank drew a crowd, and people who saw the crowd believed that there was a run on the bank, so they hurried to withdraw their money. Marija sews her savings into her clothing, which now weighs her down so that she fears sinking into the mud in the street