The Jungle

by Upton Sinclair

further attention, and that his place was needed for some one worse off than he. That he was utterly helpless, and had no means of keeping himself alive in the meantime, was something which did not concern the hospital authorities, nor anyone else in the city.

Even if he took to begging, he would be at a disadvantage—for reasons which he was to discover in good time. In the beginning he could not think of anything except getting out of the awful cold.

bought a drink, and then stood by the fire shivering and waiting to be ordered out. According to an unwritten law, the buying a drink included the privilege of loafing for just so long; then one had to buy another drink, or move on. That Jurgis was an old customer entitled him to a somewhat longer stop; but then he had been away

look miserable to attract custom. A

workingman would come in, feeling cheerful after his day’s work was over, and it would trouble him to have to take his glass with such a sight under his nose; and so he would call out: “Hello, Bud, what’s the matter? You look as if you’d been up against it!” And then the other would begin to pour out some tale of misery, and the man would say, “Come have a glass, and maybe that’ll brace you up.” And so they would drink together, and if the tramp was sufficiently wretched-looking, or good enough at the “gab,” they might have two; and if they were to discover that they were from the same country, or had lived in the same city, or worked at the same trade, they might sit down at a table and spend an hour or two in talk—and before they got through the saloon-keeper would have taken in a dollar. All of this may seem diabolical, but the saloon-keeper was in nowise to blame for it. He had either to do it or be driven out of business, just as now-a-days every manufacturer has to

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

and at the door men were packed tight enough to walk upon.

the fact, in a word, that his life was a hell, and that a man who has to live in hell had better be drunk than sober.

So all the hiding places of the jungle were crowded, and before that station-house door men fought and tore each other like savage beasts. When at last the place was jammed and they shut the doors, half the crowd was still

outside, and Jurgis, with his helpless arm, was among them. There was no choice then but to go to a lodging-house and spend another dime. It really broke his heart to do this, at half-past twelve o’clock, after he had wasted the night at the meeting and on the street. He would be turned out of the lodging-house promptly at seven—they had the shelves which served as bunks so contrived that they could be dropped, and any man who was slow about obeying orders could be tumbled to the floor.

At the end of six days every cent of Jurgis’s money was gone; and then he went out on the streets to beg for his life.

approach every likely-looking person who passed him, telling his woeful story and pleading for a nickel or a dime.

until he was as warm as toast.

felt at home—it was the place where he was supposed to be, where everything was understood, without questions or apologies.

Part of the saloon-keeper’s business was to offer a home and refreshment to beggars in exchange for th...

done it himself? Poor Jurgis might have been expected to make a successful beggar. He was just out of the hospital, and desperately sick-looking, and with a helpless arm; also he had no overcoat, and shivered pitifully. But, alas, his case was like that of the honest merchant—he found that the genuin...

Every day the police net would drag hundreds of them off the streets, and in the Detention Hospital you might see them, herded together in a miniature inferno, with hideous, beastly faces, bloated and leprous with disease, laughing, shouting, screaming, in all stages of drunkenness, barking like dogs, gibbering like

apes,

raving and tearing themselves in the last sta...

of those who had not. He was one of the latter; and all outdoors, all life, was to him one colossal prison, which he paced

and there was no place for him among them. There was no place for him anywhere—every place he turned his gaze, this fact was forced upon him. Everything was built to express it to him; the residences, with their heavy walls and bolted doors, and basement-windows barred with iron; the great ware-houses filled with the products of the whole world, and guarded by iron shutters and heavy

gates; the banks with their unthinkable billions of wealth, all buried in safes and vaults of steel.

hatred became personal and direct—he hated the rich. He would wander out along the great

flitting here and there, taking large chances with the police, in his desperation half hoping to be arrested.

to make sure that the precious hundred dollar bill was still there.

Yet he was in a plight—a curious and even dreadful plight, when he came to realize it. He had not a single cent but that one bill! And he had to find some shelter that night—he had to change it! How could it be done? Jurgis spent half an hour walking and debating the problem. There was no one he could go to for help—he had to manage it all alone.

He might go to some hotel or railroad-depot and ask to have it changed; but what would they think, seeing a “bum” like him with a hundred dollars?

but now he was free to listen to these men, and to realize that he was now one of them—that their point of view was his point of view, and that the way they kept themselves alive in the world was the way he meant to do it in future.

After further examination they burned the card-case and its contents,

and they had found her frozen stiff in an area-way the next morning.

Duane, who had done a job of some sort by himself, and made a truce with the powers, brought over Marie, his little French girl, to share with him—but even that did not avail for long, and in the end the other took him out and gave him his introduction to the saloons and “sporting-houses” where the big crooks and “hold-up men” hung out.

and also the “grey wolves” of the city council, who gave away the streets of the city to the business men;

they could tell within one per cent what the vote of their district would be and they could change it at an hour’s notice.

was fined ten dollars and the fine was “suspended”—which meant that he did not have to pay it, and never would have to pay it, unless somebody chose to bring it up against him in the future.

Among the people Jurgis lived with now money was valued according to an entirely different standard from that of the people of Packingtown;

which was more then they would

The one image which the word “Socialist” brought to Jurgis was of poor little Tamoszius Kuslejka, who had called himself one, and would go out with a couple of other men and a soap-box, and shout himself hoarse on a street corner Saturday nights.

to make up for the time he had lost before he discovered the extra bung-holes of the campaign barrel.

only now, when they were driven mad by their sufferings, did the public discover their existence—

the feeble efforts of a score or two of clerks and stenographers and office-boys to finish up the job

became one of President Eliot’s “American heroes,” a man whose virtues merited comparison with those of the martyrs

As very few of the better class of workingmen could be got for such work, these specimens of the new American hero contained an assortment of the criminals and thugs of the city, besides negroes and the lowest types of foreigners—Greeks, Roumanians, Sicilians and Slovaks.

and they were not deterred from smoking, either by the placards on the walls, or by the total absence of fire-escapes in the building. They made the night hideous with singing and carousing, and only went to sleep when the time came for them to get up

It was a weird sight, there on the killing floor—a throng of stupid black negroes, and foreigners who could not understand a word that was said to them, mixed with palefaced, hollow-chested book-keepers and clerks, half-fainting for the tropical heat and sickening stench of fresh blood

The negroes and the “toughs” from the levee did not want to work, and every few minutes they would feel obliged to retire and recuperate.

“See hyar, boss,” a big black “buck” would begin, “ef you doan’ like de way Ah does dis job you kin git somebody else to do it; ‘cause Ah doan’ stay to take no orders from nobody. Ah doan’—” and so on, while the crowd would gather and listen and stare. After the first meal nearly all the steel knives had been missing, and now every negro had one, ground to a fine point, hidden in his boots.

and as the hog is the most ferocious cannibal among animals, the rest would attack him before he had ceased kicking, and when the car was opened there would be nothing of him left but the bones. If all the hogs in this car-load were not killed at once, they would soon be down with the dread disease, and then their flesh would defy even the chemistry of Packingtown to make it palatable.

In some places they would use the same room for eating and sleeping, and at night the men would put their cots upon the tables,

An attempt was made to take about three hundred negroes out by the Halstead street cars, under the escort of an equal number of police, and when the strikers divined the plan a howling mob of about four thousand gathered.

the terrified negroes dashed aboard, most of them flinging themselves down upon the floor of the cars, piled three deep. When they started