Chapter+Analysis


 * __Chapter Analysis__**

__Chapter One:__ Little Ona has just gotten married to Jurgis, and this chapter describes the wedding-feast, the //veselija//. It is noted that the expensive and unfair prices of everything equal about three hundred dollars, which is more than most of the guests make in a year. In addition, many of the younger guests sneak away without paying their portion of the bills. When Ona and Jurgis get back to their apartment, Jurgis insists that Ona will not have to work to pay the expenses. He says that he will work harder. I predict that even if Jurgis works harder, he will not make enough money to pay the bills.

__Chapter Two:__ This chapter describes how Jurgis, Ona, and their families came to Chicago. Jurgis was raised in the Lithuanian Imperial Forest. His brother was drafted into the army ten years ago and never heard from again, while his sister married and bought the family house. Dede Antanas had decided to leave with Jurgis for America. Jurgis met Ona at a horse fair, a year and a half before he left Lithuania. Ona was just a child, and though Jurgis was already in love with her, his father refused to let them marry because of her youth. When Jurgis later returned, he found that Ona's father had died. He again asked to marry her, but Ona refused because she did not want to leave Teta Elzbieta. Ona's family left with Jurgis's and Cousin Marija to go to America. Their trip went poorly--they were cheated time and again by American officials and tricked into staying at expensive hotels. They get lost as soon as they get to Chicago, and are led to the stockyards and a boarding house. The neighborhood is filthy and people sleep six or more in a room at the boarding house. I predict that Ona eventually married Jurgis to save her family the trouble of having to care for her.

__Chapter Three:__ Jurgis finds work at Brown's meat, shoveling blood and guts from slaughtered cattle. Jokubus leaves the delicatessen in his wife's hands while he guides the newcomers around the slaughterhouse. Eight to ten million cattle, pigs, and sheep are turned into food at this slaughterhouse each year. The unfortunate animals are mechanically slaughtered, and each carcass is brought by a government inspector who feels its glands for tuberculosis. However, it is noted that the inspector is lazy and easily distracted, and many carcasses go by him without inspection. Jokubus shows the group the room where the meat is 'doctored'. Every part of the animal is processed--entrails become sausage casings, while scraps are used in soaps and lard. It is noted that "they use every part of the hog except the squeal." Workers then prepare the carcasses, turning an average of four to five hundred cattle an hour into beef. During the process, the butcher bleeds the animal, then the carcass is dropped to the floor, where it is skinned and beheaded, then hung up again to be cleaned. The packing plant is very efficient, and seems to need nothing from the outside world. Jurgis is happy to have a job here. I predict that he will discover some secret that will make him more unhappy than he originally thought.

__Chapter Four:__ Jurgis is quickly trained to follow behind the disemboweller and sweep of the guts and entrails of slaughtered cattle while he wades through steaming hot blood on the floor. He makes seventeen and a half cents an hour, and is grateful and almost proud to have such a job. Meanwhile, Jonas, Ona's brother, has found work with one of Jokubus's contacts. Antanas, however, is having difficulty finding a job--it seems that no employer will hire an old man. Jurgis tells Ona, Elzbieta, and the children that they shouldn't have to work, since education in America is free, and they should be taught so they can find better jobs. During this time, Jurgis is looking at a home for his family. The agent convinces them to buy the house, even though it is not a very nice house and it will take all of their money just to make a down payment. Jurgis vows to "work harder" once more to pay the loans and mortgages on their new house. I predict that Dede Antanas will not get a job, and Jurgis will have to take a second job to pay for everything.

__Chapter Five:__ Jurgis quickly learns many things about the slaughterhouse. The pace is excruciatingly fast, and he isn't sure if it is even humanly possible. Almost immediately, he identifies the "pacemakers"--huge, highly paid men working as fast as they possibly can under the watchful eye of the boss. It is a process known as "speeding up the line"--in this process, the other workers must follow the pacemakers' speed or they will be replaced. Jurgis, however, still loves his job, and is surprised and confused when he learns that the other men hate the workplace, the boss, and the city in general. When he asks why, they tell him to stay and find out for himself. Jurgis is approached by a delegate from the union, who tells him that to be part of the union, he will have to part with some of his wages. Jurgis immediately refuses, and even when he finds out that the union's main cause is to stop the speeding-up process, which is killing some of the workers, he is unsympathetic. Dede Antanas has also found a job at Durham's factory, in the pickle room. The boss has only agreed to let him work if he agrees to be paid a third of the usual wages. Antanas takes the offer and begins work. Within a few days, he already hates it as much as everyone else in the factory. Antanas sees terrible truths; the beef is "pickled" in vats of chemicals, and then the workers spear the beef out and dump it into the truck. When they have gotten all the meat they can reach, the vat is dumped onto the filthy floor and the meat is shoveled up into the truck. Antanas's job is then to mop the chemicals down the drain. Every few days, he is to clean out the drain and shovel any meat that may have been caught there into the truck with the rest of the meat. Jurgis also sees terrible things. Pregnant cows are automatically declared unfit for food, but oftentimes a pregnant cow will be pushed onto the line and the inspector will miss it, leaving the cow to be butchered. Even more terribly, often the flesh of the unborn baby cow will be butchered for meat as well. Jurgis has also witnessed the processing of "downers", which are cows that are sick or injured, or even dead before they reach the slaughterhouse. These cows are processed at night, after the inspector has left. Jurgis slowly begins to understand the bitterness of the workers. I predict that Jurgis and Antanas will discover more terrible secrets and one of them will quit or join the union.

__Chapter Six:__ Jurgis and Ona are thinking of marrying, but they know they can't pay for a traditional wedding-feast. Ona suggests that she will get a job, but Jurgis flat-out refuses. They meet another Lithuanian woman who tells them horror stories about the immigrants who come to Chicago. The wages are higher here, but the immigrants do not realize that the cost of living is also higher, until it is too late. Then, the woman says, they are all like rats in a trap. She also tells about the labor laws preventing children under sixteen from working. However, families have been producing false papers for their children to get them jobs in the factories. Without the extra money, she says, they would not survive. The woman also informs them that they will have to pay interest on their monthly house payments. It is decided--Ona must find work, along with Stanislovas, Elzbieta's thirteen-year-old son. Ona finds a job wrapping and sewing hams, for ten dollars a week. Stanislovas obtains false papers that say he is sixteen, and gets a job setting empty lard cans under a lard spout for five cents an hour. I predict that more financial trouble will come to the family when they are barely surviving already.

__Chapter Seven:__ The family toils all summer and in the fall, they have enough money for Jurgis and Ona to marry. As Lithuanian tradition dictates, they spare no expense in the wedding feast because they'll earn every penny back during the Acziarimas Ceremony. However, this did not happen and after the feast, the family is a hundred dollars in debt--an impossible sum. Meanwhile, Jurgis is coming to understand that he is engaged in a war against corruption and against every other man out there--a war against the world. Ona becomes quite ill but still has to trudge to work. With the terrible Chicago winter coming on, the family faces a number of problems. They don't know that sewage is pooling under the house. They do not know that the milk they buy each day is doctored with formaldehyde to keep its spoilage inconspicuous. The cellars in which a number of the family members work are unheated, leaving the workers frozen to the bone. Antanas's cough grows worse in the pickling rooms and because his feet are soaked in the chemicals that pool on the floor, he develops horrible sores. One day, Antanas collapses at work and is unable to get up again. Tuberculosis is consuming him, though he doesn't know it. When he dies, the family can't afford a funeral. Winter brings disease to the yards. When a man doesn't show up for work, the boss assumes he is gravely ill or dead, and picks a man to replace him from one of the hundreds of starving men waiting outside for their chance to work. Stanislovas watches a boy with severe frostbite on his ears get them ripped off when a man tries to rub them to warm them up. He develops a manic fear of the cold and complains before work every day. I predict that Stanislovas will fall ill or die because of the poor working conditions and the cold.

__Chapter Eight:__ Marija and Tamoszius have started courting. Tamoszius, being a terrific fiddler, can make a nice amount of money playing at parties and the likes. The couple plans on marrying in the spring. Marija believes that with her job, she is doing well in this new world. Then, without warning, the factory closes and her job is pulled out from under her. Her co-workers inform her that this is common, and that sometimes the factory stays closed until the summer. Marija looks, in vain, for another job. Jurgis is no longer confused when he hears his co-workers talk of union action and of their rights as workers. Now Jurgis feels like fighting, and when the union delegate approaches him again, Jurgis signs up. The delegate explains that success depends on the union's ability to get every worker to join and stay loyal. Soon, all members of the family have union cards. They think belonging to a union will end their troubles, but when Marija's factory closes, it's a confusing blow. Why didn't the union prevent the shutdown, they wonder. Marija promptly attends her first union meeting and makes a stirring speech in which she vents her outrage at the injustice in local labor. Her speech is in Lithuanian, and because the meeting is conducted in English, it is not noted. I predict that Jurgis's family will influence the union to take a stand somehow.

__Chapter Nine:__ After joining the union, Jurgis enrolls in free night school to learn English so that he might participate in the meetings. He learns about democracy and politics. Jurgis discovers that in America, like everywhere else, the rich men own almost everything. After Jurgis has been working at Brown's for three weeks, a night watchman asks him if he wants to become a naturalized citizen of the United States. Jurgis does and is taken, along with a number of his co-workers, to big gray buildings where he fills out paperwork. Then the man treats them to rounds of drinks and Brown's gives Jurgis days off work to complete the process. Jurgis doesn't realize he's involved in a corrupt operation, though. Men bribe the workers to vote a certain way during elections, paying them for a vote, and giving them free drinks at the saloons where the voting booths are located. Jurgis realizes something is not right when Jonas comes home one night and says that he offered to vote three times for four dollars-and that his offer has been accepted! Jurgis learns more about Chicago's politics, and about Brown's, where he works. Everyone there is corrupt. The government inspectors are corrupt, too-the American people see their presence in the slaughterhouses and assume that meat is disease-free. They are wrong. The packers themselves appointed these inspectors, and in addition, the rules regarding safe handling are hazy-there are many loopholes. Tubercular steers and choleric hogs are turned into lard and the inspectors are paid off in the thousands to keep quiet about it. Jurgis also hears horror stories from the butchers and learns the "recipes " of Durham's and Brown's goods-tripe, hearts, waste products and tongues, all dyed with chemicals. Up until a year before Jurgis arrived at the yards, they had even used horsemeat. That has stopped, for the moment, because of an investigation. But once in a while, a goat is passed off as mutton. Sometimes men even fell into the vats of lard and perished and it will be days before someone will discover the bones, mixed in with the lard. I predict that Jurgis will take some sort of stand against this.

__Chapter Ten:__ As Jurgis's wages drop, the family begins living hand to mouth again. Marija's savings are almost gone and she has given up the idea of marrying Tamoszius. Unforeseen costs-house repair, insurance-make things worse. The approach of summer brings stifling heat to the killing beds and a plague of flies. The managers and supers watch the workers suffer and feel themselves a class apart. They might be doing as poorly as the worker in wages, but they are of a different class and suffer the requisite snobbery. The canning factory opens again and Marija is overjoyed to have her job back. However, she promptly loses it when she complains to the super that her forelady is short-shifting her on her lard can count. Marija is sure she was fired because of her activity in the union, as the packers have spies in union meetings. Marija searches for another job and loses interest in the union as her search proved fruitless. Eventually she gets a job as a beef trimmer, generally a man's job, trimming the meat of diseased <span class="IL_AD">cattle. Meanwhile, Ona is discovering the seedy underside of her workplace. She'd long believed her forelady disliked her. She thought it was because she didn't occasionally give Miss Henderson a bribe, like the other girls. In fact, Miss Henderson is a former mistress of a boss in the same building and has secured her job with a bribe--to keep quiet about the affair. She lives downtown in a whorehouse and during the slack season, a number of Ona's co-workers work for her as prostitutes. Ona becomes pregnant and gives <span class="IL_AD">birth to a boy, whom she and Jurgis name Antanas after Dede Antanas. Jurgis rarely sees the <span class="IL_AD">child, because of his work schedule. In fact, Ona is unable to nurse her <span class="IL_AD">baby because she has to continue working at the factory, <span class="IL_AD">sewing hams. Ona becomes more ill. I predict the baby Antanas will die.

__Chapter Eleven:__ When summer arrives, the packinghouses are once again fully operational and Jurgis makes more money--though not as much as he made last summer. The bosses are training new workers, overpopulating the workforce. They are training strikebreakers. The extra workers cause wages to drop, and the grumblings become louder. It seems something is set to happen against the backdrop of the union and packinghouses. At Marija's old factory, the girls' wages are cut in half and they walk out on the job, striking. A new union emerges out of this difficulty, but their strike fails as the rush of new labor fills their positions. As he witnesses all these difficulties, Jurgis comes to realize that the factories are really one firm. All are in collusion with each other, fixing prices. Voting time comes around again and Jurgis accepts the bribes for his vote, though he knows by this time it is wrong. He thinks his refusal will not make a bit of difference and the extra money will. Time passes and winter approaches again. The deadly cold and snow of winter returns and Jurgis is once again struggling through gigantic snowdrifts, carrying Ona and Stanislovas to work. Then, one day, a terrible blow: Jurgis has an accident at work. The company doctor tells him that he'll be laid up for months with a severe ankle and foot injury. The accident poses a terrible problem for the family. I predict that without Jurgis working, the family will starve.

__Chapter Twelve:__ After Jurgis has been in bed for three weeks, he limps back to Brown's to <span class="IL_AD">get back to work, though he is far from healed. He discovers that his boss has kept his job for him and happily goes back to work. Unfortunately, the pain in his foot is horrendous and by the end of the day, he is weeping in pain. Finally they call an unaffiliated <span class="IL_AD">doctor who tells Jurgis that he has a twisted tendon in his ankle and will have to be in bed for two months. If he tries to go back to work before then, the doctor says there is a good chance that he'll become lame for the rest of his life. So the family has to make due without Jurgis's wages. Ona and Stanislovas struggle through the <span class="IL_AD">snow and Stanislovas' mania about the snowdrifts returns. Jurgis has to beat him every morning to get him to head out to work. Jurgis discovers Ona's bankbook and sees that they have three dollars left to them in the world. Around this time, Jonas disappears. He'd recently been very unhappy living in the house, where he paid good board but never had enough to eat. He'd been working at Durham's for two years now, yoked to a half-ton truck in the cellars. The family believes that Jonas has deserted them, though there is an equally good chance that he'd been killed and the bosses are covering it up. In any case, Jonas' disappearance cuts the family's income by a third and they decide that two more of the children have to leave school and go to work. Vilimas, eleven, and his <span class="IL_AD">brother Nikalojus, ten, become <span class="IL_AD">newspaper boys and start bringing home forty cents a day. <span class="IL_AD">Spring arrives and Ona grows more ill. In April, the doctor tells Jurgis that he can go back to work, but when he <span class="IL_AD">shows up at Brown's, the boss tells him that he could not keep the job for him. So, Jurgis takes his place outside the gates with the hungry mob looking for a job-but this time he is no longer strong and fresh, and is thin and haggard. Jurgis searches for a job for weeks but there is not a job to be found in the yards. Jurgis sees the bitter cycle of the yards. As Jurgis comes to know the men who are also looking for work, he found they often have the exact same <span class="IL_AD">story as he. They are underfed and overworked and finally, when a <span class="IL_AD">disease descended, as it must, they lost their jobs. I predict that Jurgis will not find a job and the family will suffer and maybe lose their house.

__Chapter Thirteen:__ One of Elzbieta's children, Kristoforas, dies after eating a diseased <span class="IL_AD">sausage. He was Elzbieta's favorite--three years old, a cripple with rickets and a congenital dislocation of the hip. The family has no money at all, but Elzbieta insists on a proper <span class="IL_AD">funeral for her <span class="IL_AD">child, so Marija donates some money and Elzbieta goes door to door begging. Meanwhile, Jurgis is still unemployed and becoming more desperate for work. He realizes, as he paces before the gates of the packinghouses, that there are stages of unemployment. He had reached the lowest--he is willing to work in the <span class="IL_AD">fertilizer works. The fertilizer works are set apart from the other parts of the factory. All the waste products end up here and are made into fertilizer--gelatin, albumen, glue, etc. Jurgis, after hearing about the horrors of the fertilizer plant--how the smell nearly chokes you and how the smell bleeds into your skin so that people around you become ill--takes the job because he has to feed his family. Jurgis's job is to shovel fertilizer into carts. He suffers through <span class="IL_AD">dust storms of fertilizer--his eyes burn, and he vomits. He's happy to have a job. Because the summer brings relative prosperity, and because the boys are picking up bad habits, the family decide that their work as <span class="IL_AD">newspaper boys should end in the fall, and they'll return to <span class="IL_AD">school. However, this means that Elzbieta must begin working and Kotrina, Elzbieta's daughter, will take over the domestic duties. Elzbieta gets work at a sausage machine, filling casings with the <span class="IL_AD">meat. It is deadly dull work and she sees first hand what these factories call sausage--a poisonous mix of random byproducts. I predict that Elzbieta's work will kill her.

__Chapter Fourteen:__ As they work in their respective wings of the packinghouses, Jurgis and Elzbieta see the horrors first-hand. For instance, whenever <span class="IL_AD">meat is so spoiled that it can't be used for cuts, it is canned or made into <span class="IL_AD">sausages. The workers are instructed to fill these spoiled and discolored sausages with chemicals that make the spoilage more unnoticeable. Elzbieta has to trim the spoiled sausages, which have been treated with borax and glycerin, as well as trim meat that has fallen on the disgusting, rat-infested floor. When the shovelers come by, they shovel bread, rats, and spoiled meat into the <span class="IL_AD">sausage vats. Ona is now terribly ill and the family's life is becoming more and more more desolate. Jurgis is drinking heavily now--he begins to resent his family for the bonds he <span class="IL_AD">feels they keep him in. <span class="IL_AD">Baby Antanas is sick with measles and Ona is pregnant again. This is a dreadful development, for Ona is far too sick to have a baby. She develops a horrific <span class="IL_AD">cough, like the one that killed Dede Antanas. Jurgis and Ona quarrel regularly now and Ona often cries. I predict that both Ona and her new baby will die.

__Chapter Fifteen:__ Jurgis thinks something is terribly wrong with Ona, something that she and Elzbieta aren't telling him. Ona is constantly terrified, often starts crying for no reason and seems hysterical all the time. As winter approaches, the hours for the family increase at the factories. Ona and Elzbieta are working fifteen or sixteen hours a day. Near Thanksgiving, a terrible snowstorm descends on the city and the next morning, Elzbieta tells Jurgis that Ona did not come <span class="IL_AD">home that night. Jurgis goes looking for her, and spots her trudging through the <span class="IL_AD">snow. She tells him that the streetcars had stopped running and she'd had to stay with her <span class="IL_AD">friend Jadvyga Marcinkus. Jurgis doesn't entirely believe her, and is very suspicious as to why Ona is sobbing and trembling violently. Clearly, something is very wrong. One night near <span class="IL_AD">Christmas, Marija and Elzbieta come home, exclaiming that Ona had not met them after work. Jurgis thinks she is just at Jadvyga's house again but when he goes there, Jadvyga says that Ona isn't there, and she had never been there. He searches all over for her and at her workplace, a man tells him that there is a great traffic jam downtown and perhaps that is what is holding her up. Jurgis, confused, tells him that Ona never goes downtown, and the man exchanges a knowing glance with a <span class="IL_AD">female worker, which Jurgis catches. He spots Ona in a car on Ashland Avenue and follows her home. When he follows her inside, Elzbieta tries to intercept him, lying about where Ona has been, but by this time, Jurgis's suspicions are thick. He confronts Ona and a terrible <span class="IL_AD">fight ensues. Ona has a convulsive fit and tells him that she has been spending her evenings in Miss Henderson's whorehouse. Connor, the boss at her factory, had tried to seduce her and demanded that she <span class="IL_AD">sleep with him or she'd lose her job and he'd be sure to find a way to take the jobs away from all her family members. So she became Connor's mistress for the good of the family. Jurgis is <span class="IL_AD">blind with fury. He runs down Ashland Avenue, heading for the factory, looking for Connor. When he finds him, Jurgis <span class="IL_AD">beats him severely. I predict that Connor will fire Ona for her husband's interference.

__Chapter Sixteen:__ Jurgis is charged with <span class="IL_AD">assault and battery, and after savoring that moment of satisfaction from <span class="IL_AD">beating the man who controlled his wife, Jurgis begins to realize that what he has done will mean yet more hardships for the family. He realizes, too, that Ona will lose her job for his actions. Judge Pat Callahan, an ex-butcher who is now a corrupt politician, hears Jurgis's case. He deals Jurgis a $300 bond which Jurgis cannot pay and Jurgis is sent to Bridewell jail. In his jail cell, Jurgis is tortured by thoughts of the hardship his family will suffer with him in jail and unable to work. He stays there through <span class="IL_AD">Christmas and wonders how it is that prisoners can eat three meals a day while hard-working families starve. I predict that when Jurgis is released, he will be unable to find work and the family will suffer even more.

__Chapter Seventeen:__ No one in the family comes to visit Jurgis, and he thinks about them constantly. He has a new cellmate named Jack Duane. He is a cheerful man who tells Jurgis <span class="IL_AD">stories of intrigue and rebellion. It seems to Jurgis that Duane has struck back at the world, <span class="IL_AD">walking the underbelly of the city and engaging in crime time after time. Everyone in the prison knows Duane by name. On the day when Jurgis is to be tried, Elzbieta and Kotrina are sitting in <span class="IL_AD">the gallery. Connor testifies that Jurgis attacked him after he'd fired Ona, and denies that there is any truth in Jurgis's side of the <span class="IL_AD">story. With an alliance between corrupt politicians and the packinghouses, there is no chance for <span class="IL_AD">justice. Jurgis is sent back to prison for thirty more days. One day Stanislovas visits him, telling Jurgis that Ona is incredibly ill and that the family is nearly starving. Marija has injured her hand and cannot work and Ona, of course, has been fired. There is nothing Jurgis can do. I predict that Ona will die.

__Chapter Eighteen:__ Jurgis is set free without any money to his name and walks the twenty miles home. When he comes upon the house, it looks different--it has been repainted. He slowly realizes that new people live there. In a rage he asks his old neighbors where the family has gone and finally <span class="IL_AD">traces them to Aniele Jukniene's <span class="IL_AD">boarding house, where they first lived after coming to Chicago. When he walks in, he hears Ona <span class="IL_AD">screaming in pain upstairs. When he <span class="IL_AD">rushes to her, Marija, whom Jurgis barely recognizes because of her thinness, intercepts him. Ona is <span class="IL_AD">giving birth, she tells him, but far too early. There is no money for a <span class="IL_AD">doctor and Ona is dying. Jurgis demands that they pool what little money they have and find someone to help his wife. I predict Ona will die even if they get help.

__Chapter Nineteen:__ Jurgis begs Madame Haupt, a fat Dutchwoman, to help Ona. He doesn't have nearly enough <span class="IL_AD">money to <span class="IL_AD">hire her and she haggles with him relentlessly, while Jurgis is thinking only of Ona, and how much closer she comes to death with each passing second. Finally she agrees to help Ona. When they arrive at <span class="IL_AD">the house, the <span class="IL_AD">women force Jurgis to leave. He goes to a nearby saloon where he is known and the barkeep gives him a free <span class="IL_AD">meal and a <span class="IL_AD">drink. He spends the night there and when he returns to the house in the morning, he sees Madame Haupt coming down the stairs covered in <span class="IL_AD">blood. She tells Jurgis she's done her best, but Ona is nearly dead. Jurgis runs upstairs to be with Ona. She dies in his arms, at 18 years old.

__Chapter Twenty:__ Ona's body is to be buried in Potter's Field, and Elzbieta begs <span class="IL_AD">money from her neighbors so that Ona can have a funeral mass. Jurgis has been driven mad with grief. Elzbieta and Marija beg him to <span class="IL_AD">pull himself together and work again, because the family is starving. Jurgis finds his job at the fertilizer works is gone. He soon realizes that he has been blacklisted, thanks to his <span class="IL_AD">beating of Ona's old employer. He has no chance at a job, his <span class="IL_AD">friends tell him. Jurgis moves downtown to <span class="IL_AD">look for a job and gets a chance through an accidental meeting of an old <span class="IL_AD">union buddy on his way to work at a machine factory. He says the foreman will find him a place at the Harvester Works. Jurgis quickly realizes that Harvester Works is a good place to work-an innovative workplace where workers are treated well with large workrooms, a <span class="IL_AD">cafeteria, <span class="IL_AD">reading rooms and good <span class="IL_AD">treatment by the bosses. Jurgis begins making parts for the harvesting and mowing machines turned out by the factory. He is paid nearly two dollars a day and after work, he re-enrolls in night <span class="IL_AD">school to improve his English. Things are turning up when, on the ninth day, the department closes until further notice. I predict Jurgis will not find another job, and Elzbieta or the baby will die.

__Chapter Twenty-One:__ Money is low again, and Baby Antanas is cold and hungry. While Jurgis looks for a new job, Juozapas, another of Elzbieta's sons, scours the dump for food. One day when he is digging through garbage, a well-dressed woman stops him and asks about his family's problems. She tells him she is a settlement worker and will come to the family's <span class="IL_AD">boarding house to hear more. She is shocked by filth and blood smeared on the walls. Elzbieta tells <span class="IL_AD">the woman about their tragedies and the woman bursts into tears. She sends them a <span class="IL_AD">basket of food and gives Jurgis a <span class="IL_AD">letter to take to the superintendent of a mill in the steelworks in <span class="IL_AD">South Chicago-her fiancée. When Jurgis arrives at the steelworks, he is interviewed by a <span class="IL_AD">company timekeeper and given a job moving steel <span class="IL_AD">railroad ties with crowbars. The factory is 16 miles away and it takes Jurgis two hours to get there. He decides to move into a <span class="IL_AD">lodging house nearby and come <span class="IL_AD">home on Saturday nights with his pay for the family. At work he witnesses many accidents, due to risky shortcuts. He burns his hand helping a man who has been badly burned, and is out of work for 8 days, recovering. Elzbieta has found a job scrubbing the floors of the packers' offices; Marija works as a beef trimmer and the children continue selling <span class="IL_AD">papers. As <span class="IL_AD">spring arrives, the horrible roads in the yards flood with mud and water. One day when Jurgis arrives home, he spots a crowd gathered in front of Aniele's house. Baby Antanas has fallen off the sidewalk--a platform of boards five feet above <span class="IL_AD">the street --and drowned in the muddy river below. He is dead. I predict Jurgis will not be able to work past his grief.

__Chapter Twenty-Two:__ Jurgis is again mad with pain and loss, but this time he has to <span class="IL_AD">escape. He rail-hops a train car headed west and, as he passes into countryside, he is overjoyed. He has never dreamed that <span class="IL_AD">America could look like this. He eats at farmhouses, swims in the creek, and <span class="IL_AD">travels the countryside. His <span class="IL_AD">lost vigor returns. Jurgis makes a conscious decision not to work for the farmers he meets because none of them can promise to keep him through the winter. Instead, he'll become a tramp, stealing potatoes and apples from farms, and becoming a part of the tramp community, taking harvest work here and there. He frequents saloons and prostitutes. One night, he comes upon a house owned by a Slav and they speak of the old country, but when he sees the Slav's wife <span class="IL_AD">bathing her <span class="IL_AD">infant, he bursts into tears and <span class="IL_AD">flees. The <span class="IL_AD">memory of Antanas and Ona is too much for him to bear. I predict Jurgis will eventually have to return.

__Chapter Twenty-Three:__ In the <span class="IL_AD">fall, Jurgis heads back to Chicago, realizing he can't keep living as a tramp. When he goes back to the steel-mill and harvester works, he finds that his jobs are gone, and he has been replaced. He keeps away from the stockyards, trying to avoid his family. He finally gets a job after telling the man interviewing him that he'd never worked in Chicago before, therefore <span class="IL_AD">escaping the blacklist. Jurgis is now digging tunnels for telephone wires. He learns later that the City Council has passed a bill allowing a <span class="IL_AD">company to build phone conduits under city streets for crooked purposes. It doesn't matter to Jurgis--this is a job that will last through the winter. Jurgis spends much of his free time in the saloons. His job is tough and dangerous, and the workers are treated poorly. It does not occur to Jurgis that his work is helping Chicago merchants put down the Teamsters. One day Jurgis is injured, smashed by a loaded car. He spends <span class="IL_AD">Christmas in the <span class="IL_AD">hospital and though he enjoys his stay, he is unaware of the scandals and investigations into that particular hospital--charges that <span class="IL_AD">doctors performed bizarre <span class="IL_AD">experiments on patients. When he is released, Jurgis is still not fit for work. Once again, he has no money and has lost his place at the <span class="IL_AD">boarding house. He hops from saloon to saloon and one night, <span class="IL_AD">attends a <span class="IL_AD">religious revival to find <span class="IL_AD">shelter and heat. Jurgis is cynical of the <span class="IL_AD">sermons and the talk of sin and redemption. Jurgis wants to know what the preacher could possibly know about suffering. It is January 1904, and the country is on the verge of a depression. Factories shut down every day. Sin is far down on the list of concerns among the people who are starving. Jurgis begins begging to stay alive. I predict Jurgis will visit his family again.

__Chapter Twenty-Four:__ One day, Jurgis begs from a well-dressed young drunk man who has a wad of <span class="IL_AD">money in his <span class="IL_AD">pocket. His <span class="IL_AD">name is Freddie Jones, and he is from a very wealthy Chicago family. He takes an interest in Jurgis and insists that Jurgis come <span class="IL_AD">home with him for food and drinks. He hands Jurgis a $100 bill and asks him to get him a cab. Jurgis thinks about robbing him, but he hesitates, and before he knows it they are at Freddie's <span class="IL_AD">mansion on <span class="IL_AD">Lake Shore <span class="IL_AD">Drive. Freddie's father is a Beef Trust man, Jones the Packer--once Jurgis' boss. The mansion is <span class="IL_AD">beautiful. Freddie demands that the servants prepare a tray full of exotic food and <span class="IL_AD">wine for Jurgis. While Jurgis wolfs down the meal, Freddie tells him the colorful <span class="IL_AD">story of his family--the scandals, the <span class="IL_AD">marriages to royalty, and so on. When Freddie passes out, the butler harasses Jurgis and turns him out. But Jurgis has managed to hold on to the $100 bill. Now he must cash it. I predict Jurgis will get charged for stealing.

__Chapter Twenty-Five:__ The chances of Jurgis finding someone to cash a bill that large are very slim. He goes to a saloon where the bartender is alone and asks him to <span class="IL_AD">change the bill. The man steals Jurgis's money and a terrible argument ensues. Jurgis is arrested and sent to <span class="IL_AD">jail. In court, no one believes that a homeless man would have a $100 bill. He is found guilty almost immediately. Jurgis doesn't know that the bar owner has paid off the cops, and the bartender is a henchman who hustled votes for the judge. So Jurgis is sent to jail again and meets up with Jack Duane, who is also in jail again. When they are released, Duane draws Jurgis into a life of crime. The two of them begin robbing men on darkened streets. On the first heist, Jurgis scores 93 dollars, then reads about the incident in the <span class="IL_AD">newspaper. The man they robbed had been badly hurt and Jurgis feels somewhat ashamed. Then Duane introduces Jurgis to the big crooks and hold-up men in the saloons and whorehouses of Chicago. Jurgis begins a life of crime and learns just how corrupt the city is. Chicago is "owned" by an oligarchy of merchants and a huge <span class="IL_AD">army of graft is necessary to purchase power. Twice a year, during the <span class="IL_AD">spring and fall elections, businessmen spend millions of dollars, handed out by a graft army, to buy votes. In addition, they bribe lobbyists, legislators, and <span class="IL_AD">corporate lawyers. The police force forges <span class="IL_AD">alliances with the barkeepers and the underworld of crime is spurred on by laws bought by dollars. Duane introduces Jurgis to Buck Halloran, an Irish political worker, who brings Jurgis in on a <span class="IL_AD">plan to pick up Buck's city laborer's payoffs. Jurgis's life of crime continues and he falls in with more criminals. He learns about the Racing Trust, which owns legislatures in every state where it does business. When the elections <span class="IL_AD">roll around, the criminals do big business, yet Jurgis is tired and wants to go into politics. Jurgis runs into Bush Harper, the night watchman at Brown's, who had helped him become an <span class="IL_AD">American citizen through bribes. He is now a union nark and tells Jurgis that a strike is nearing. <span class="IL_AD">Bush Harper is the right hand man of Mike Scully and Harper wants Jurgis to help him with an intricate plan between the Democrats and Republicans, which includes payoffs and trades. A new party in the stockyards-the Socialists-compromises the election. The word reminds Jurgis of Tamoszius Kuszleika. Jurgis's job is to go back to work in the yards, get active in the unions and secure votes for the Republican candidate. Then, as part of the plan between the two parties, once the Republican is elected, Mike Scully will run unopposed as a Democrat the next year. Doyle wins the election for alderman thanks to Jurgis's bribery and illegal voting tactics. Jurgis has joined the corrupt. I predict that Jurgis will get arrested again.

__Chapter Twenty-Six:__ After the election, Jurgis becomes Scully's consultant. He about Elzbieta's whereabouts and finds that she's gone downtown. In May, the contract between the packers and unions expired and threat of a strike loomed large. The old scale dealt only with the wages of the skilled workers, though two-thirds of the labor force is unskilled. The packers, though they are making higher profits than ever before, are unwilling to raise the base wage. In June, all the packinghouse cities in America find that their workers have gone on strike. Scully wants Jurgis to work as a scab, and tells him he didn't need him in politics. Jurgis is disappointed, but when back to work, he is well paid for his scab status. The <span class="IL_AD">newspapers, in full swing of yellow journalism, want to see violence in the yards between the scabs and the striking workers, but there is no violence. The strikers, instead of attacking the scabs, counsel them to see the virtue of the union's position. Meanwhile, Jurgis becomes a boss in Durham's killing rooms and finds that the demands on the workers during the strike are lessened. Many of the scabs are uncooperative and unwilling to work very hard. The packinghouses have recruited African-Americans from southern states, as well as prisoners, not telling them beforehand that they'd be working as scabs. <span class="IL_AD">Lodging conditions are horrible. The men start working in more than once place and Jurgis takes payoffs to overlook it. Finally the packers agree to arbitrate and the unions accept their offer. Men are to be rehired with no discrimination against union members, but that does not happen. In fact, bosses make sure not to employ union leaders. The union goes on strike again. With things reaching a crisis level, the packers begin constructing a new labor force including the old scabs and new, even more unruly workers. They <span class="IL_AD">gamble, drink and take prostitutes. Illnesses weak havoc in the packinghouses where they pack meat with their bare hands. Jurgis has a horrible temper, and is as ruthless with the workers as his bosses had been with him, and takes to <span class="IL_AD">drinking even more. There are riots in the streets, police <span class="IL_AD">beating and looting, and nothing is heard of it. One day, Jurgis comes upon Connor in a whorehouse and without thinking, begins to beat him senseless once again. He doesn't know that Ona's old employer is one of Scully's biggest men and this time, no one could get Jurgis out of trouble, though Harper reduced his bail. After paying his bail, Jurgis <span class="IL_AD">flees town again. I predict that Jurgis will again return to Chicago.

__Chapter Twenty-Seven:__ Jurgis is back in his tramp <span class="IL_AD">lifestyle once more, but this time, he is an alcoholic as well. Competition for work on the road is fierce and the threat of starvation is <span class="IL_AD">grave. "There is one kind of <span class="IL_AD">prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where things are behind bars, and the man is outside." Back in Chicago, Jurgis runs into Alena Jasaityle, a guest at Jurgis' <span class="IL_AD">wedding feast. She gives him Marija's address and when Jurgis arrives at the house, he realizes it is a whorehouse. At that moment, <span class="IL_AD">the police raid and chaos ensues. When Jurgis sees Marija, she looks gaunt and sick. At the police station, she tells him that Stanislovas had died a horrific death, devoured by rats at his workplace when he'd fallen asleep. She also tells him that the family is not bitter that Jurgis had abandoned them and that he should go see them. I predict Jurgis will go to see his family.

__Chapter Twenty-Eight:__ After appearing <span class="IL_AD">in court, all the prostitutes, including Marija, head back to <span class="IL_AD">the house. Jurgis cannot help but notice how terrible Marija looks. She tells him she is addicted to morphine, and then tells him about her life of prostitution. There is a black-market <span class="IL_AD">import of foreign girls, she says, and even she is marketed by her ethnicity--she is called "Lithuanian Mary". She gives Jurgis the family's address in the "ghetto district" but Jurgis is hesitant to go even though Marija insists that they'd be overjoyed to see him. Jurgis puts off seeing the family for shame and meanwhile, happens upon that same hall where another meeting is underway, albeit without the festivities of the earlier meeting. The place is filled with people and they are incredibly enthusiastic, so Jurgis joins them. His mind is preoccupied, however, with his family and he soon falls asleep. <span class="IL_AD">The woman to his left tells him, after the man next to him has nudged him, that if he tries to listen, he might be interested. She calls him "comrade." Jurgis sees that she is mesmerized by the <span class="IL_AD">speaker onstage. He is a dark-bearded man and his words move everyone in the building. Soon Jurgis is mesmerized too. The speaker speaks of the interminable toil of the worker's life, of the squalor in which he and his family are forced to live. It is not fair and the fight is on to change it. It is time to stop believing that it is the <span class="IL_AD">natural order of things, because it is not. The words hit Jurgis like a lightning bolt and, as beaten <span class="IL_AD">down and defeated as he is, the <span class="IL_AD">speech brings back his own toil and squalor in vivid color and his sense of injustice returns. He is a new man. I predict Jurgis will now go to live with his family again and try to help Marija.

__Chapter Twenty-Nine:__ When the <span class="IL_AD">speech is over, the audience starts <span class="IL_AD">singing a song called the Marseillaise. Then the <span class="IL_AD">speaker stands to <span class="IL_AD">answer questionsm and Jurgis doesn't understand a single word. When the meeting ends, Jurgis is shocked back into reality when he remembers he is still just a bum, but he feels determined to know more about the speaker and his cause. Jurgis finds the man backstage and when he asks his questions, the man asks him if he'd like to know more about Socialism. Jurgis has no idea what Socialism is. The speaker introduces Jurgis to a man named Ostrinski, whom everyone calls Comrade Ostrinski. He is a little <span class="IL_AD">Polish man who speaks Lithuanian and who works as a pants-finisher in the ghetto district. He tells Jurgis about Socialism and Jurgis tells him the <span class="IL_AD">story of his time in America. Since Jurgis has no place to go, Ostrinski offers Jurgis his <span class="IL_AD">kitchen floor. The explanation of Socialism is complicated and Jurgis struggles to understand. Because workers are dependent on a job, they bid against each other and wages drop because no one can get more pay than the lowest man will agree to. This leads to the development of two classes: the capitalist class and the proletariat. This is unacceptable to the Socialists. They are preparing the proletariat for a revolution against those who oppressed them and are gaining <span class="IL_AD">political strength. They have locals in every big city and published weeklies in a number of different languages. The party is controlled by its own membership and has no bosses. One of the biggest principles of the party is that of no compromise. After <span class="IL_AD">learning the tenets of Socialism, Jurgis is blissful. He finally understands how the Beef Trust worked, and how it has kept him down. It isn't fate; it is greed. He learned from the Socialists that capitalism is dangerous because it breeds greed and greed has kept people in squalor and <span class="IL_AD">endless toil. I believe Jurgis will help do something about the injustice.

__Chapter Thirty:__ Jurgis finally goes to see Elzbieta, and she is very happy to see him. He wants to tell her all about his new discovery of Socialism, but she is unmoved. She only cares if Jurgis brings <span class="IL_AD">home some money, and if agreeing with him about Socialism means money, she'll agree with him. Jurgis gets a job as a porter in a <span class="IL_AD">hotel called Hind's. Ostrinski tells Jurgis that Tommy Hind is the best boss in Chicago. He is the state <span class="IL_AD">organizer of the Socialist party and Socialism is close to his <span class="IL_AD">heart, and he <span class="IL_AD">fights tirelessly for its success. He employs only Socialists. <span class="IL_AD">The hotel clerk and his assistant are both Socialists. The hotel does great business because all the radicals stay there and commercial travelers find it fun and interesting to <span class="IL_AD">listen to the impassioned speeches by the staff. Hind brings Jurgis off his chores to tell the western cattleman who come to Hind's what he'd seen on the killing beds, as well as the <span class="IL_AD">secrets of all the other Trusts. Jurgis often gets in fights with his neighbors as he tries to <span class="IL_AD">convert them. It is all so obvious to Jurgis; he can't understand the resistance. I predict Jurgis will get in trouble again for being a Socialist and revealing the secrets of the Beef Trust.

__Chapter Thirty-One:__ After getting a job, Jurgis tells Marija she can leave the whorehouse now, since he is making enough money for the whole family. She tells him she can't leave, because she is addicted to dope and is therefore unemployable. Elzbieta is now ill and the boys are unruly after their years on the streets selling papers. One night, a day before the election, a friend of <span class="IL_AD">the hotel, named Fisher, asks to see Jurgis. Fisher is a <span class="IL_AD">millionaire, dedicated to <span class="IL_AD">settlement work and lives in the slums of Chicago. He is not a Socialist, but is sympathetic to the cause. That night, he means to host a get together at which the <span class="IL_AD">editor of a big East Coast magazine, who writes against Socialism, will be present. Fisher wants Jurgis to tell this editor about the "pure food" he saw processed at the packinghouses. In addition to Fisher and the editor, named Maynard, Harry Adams is there along with some other Socialists, including a young college woman. Mr. Lucas is a mild-mannered cleric and itinerant evangelist. Nicholas Schliemann is a tall, bearded Swede who was a <span class="IL_AD">professor of Philosophy before coming to America. He is a Socialist who fully believes in the proletariat revolution and Jurgis is drawn to him immediately. He has an opinion on everything and the discussion moves from religion, to philosophy to <span class="IL_AD">politics, and ultimately, to Socialism. During the discussion, Mr. Lucas and Nicholas Schliemann agree on nothing even though they are of the same party. Maynard, the editor, points this out and Schliemann speaks at length about Socialism's breadth of ideas. The Socialist, he says, believes in the common ownership and <span class="IL_AD">democratic management of the means of producing the necessities of life. He also believes the way to do this is the class-conscious political organization of the workers, the wage earners. Schliemann and Lucas agree on this much but not more. Lucas is a religious Socialist, seeing a religious end as the result of Socialist means. Schliemann assumes a free-association end-anything is possible and it will be better. He goes on about the wastes of competition (capitalism) and what they breed: vice, industrial warfare, graft, overly wealthy people, and so on. He stresses the importance of intellectual production over capitalistic production, as well as "the positive economies of cooperation" and possible Utopian societies. But most of all, he decries the trials of wage-slavery. This last section of <span class="IL_AD">the Jungle is generally agreed to be Sinclair's polemic for Socialism, voiced through Nicholas Schliemann. Jurgis is again blissful and revitalized. Things are so clear-not only the injustice, but also the way to overcome it. On Election Day, the Socialist party takes 400,000 votes, which is an enormous increase, 350% over four years. The Socialist party takes votes all over the <span class="IL_AD">country. In fact, in <span class="IL_AD">Illinois alone, two men are elected to the state legislature. The Jungle ends with a plea to <span class="IL_AD">organize against the evils of capitalism and that, by that means, "Chicago will be ours."