to get into the buildings to interview the bosses; if they did not get a chance in the morning, there would be nothing to do but hang about the saloons the rest of the day and night.  Jurgis was saved from all this—­partly, to be sure, because it was pleasant weather, and there was no need to be indoors; but mainly because he carried with him always the pitiful little face of his wife.  He must get work, he told himself, fighting the battle with despair every hour of the day.  He must get work!  He must have a place again and some money saved up, before the next winter came.

But there was no work for him.  He sought out all the members of his union—­Jurgis had stuck to the union through all this—­and begged them to speak a word for him.  He went to every one he knew, asking for a chance, there or anywhere.  He wandered all day through the buildings; and in a week or two, when he had been all over the yards, and into every room to which he had access, and learned that there was not a job anywhere, he persuaded himself that there might have been a change in the places he had first visited, and began the round all over; till finally the watchmen and the “spotters” of the companies came to know him by sight and to order him out with threats.  Then there was nothing more for him to do but go with the crowd in the morning, and keep in the front row and look eager, and when he failed, go back home, and play with little Kotrina and the baby.

The peculiar bitterness of all this was that Jurgis saw so plainly the meaning of it.  In the beginning he had been fresh and strong, and he had gotten a job the first day; but now he was second-hand, a damaged article, so to speak, and they did not want him.  They had got the best of him—­they had worn him out, with their speeding-up and their carelessness, and now they had thrown him away!  And Jurgis would make the acquaintance of others of these unemployed men and find that they had all had the same experience.  There were some, of course, who had wandered in from other places, who had been ground up in other mills; there were others who were out from their own fault—­some, for instance, who had not been able to stand the awful grind without drink.  The vast majority, however, were simply the worn-out parts of the great merciless packing machine; they had toiled there, and kept up with the pace, some of them for ten or twenty years, until finally the time had come when they could not keep up with it any more.  Some had been frankly told that they were too old, that a sprier man was needed; others had given occasion, by some act of carelessness or incompetence; with most, however, the occasion had been the same as with Jurgis.  They had been overworked and underfed so long, and finally some disease had laid them on their backs; or they had cut themselves, and had blood poisoning, or met with some other accident.  When a man came back after that, he would get his place back only by the courtesy of the boss.  To this there was