no exception, save when the accident was one for which the firm was liable; in that case they would send a slippery lawyer to see him, first to try to get him to sign away his claims, but if he was too smart for that, to promise him that he and his should always be provided with work.  This promise they would keep, strictly and to the letter—­for two years.  Two years was the “statute of limitations,” and after that the victim could not sue.

What happened to a man after any of these things, all depended upon the circumstances.  If he were of the highly skilled workers, he would probably have enough saved up to tide him over.  The best paid men, the “splitters,” made fifty cents an hour, which would be five or six dollars a day in the rush seasons, and one or two in the dullest.  A man could live and save on that; but then there were only half a dozen splitters in each place, and one of them that Jurgis knew had a family of twenty-two children, all hoping to grow up to be splitters like their father.  For an unskilled man, who made ten dollars a week in the rush seasons and five in the dull, it all depended upon his age and the number he had dependent upon him.  An unmarried man could save, if he did not drink, and if he was absolutely selfish—­that is, if he paid no heed to the demands of his old parents, or of his little brothers and sisters, or of any other relatives he might have, as well as of the members of his union, and his chums, and the people who might be starving to death next door.

Chapter 13

During this time that Jurgis was looking for work occurred the death of little Kristoforas, one of the children of Teta Elzbieta.  Both Kristoforas and his brother, Juozapas, were cripples, the latter having lost one leg by having it run over, and Kristoforas having congenital dislocation of the hip, which made it impossible for him ever to walk.  He was the last of Teta Elzbieta’s children, and perhaps he had been intended by nature to let her know that she had had enough.  At any rate he was wretchedly sick and undersized; he had the rickets, and though he was over three years old, he was no bigger than an ordinary child of one.  All day long he would crawl around the floor in a filthy little dress, whining and fretting; because the floor was full of drafts he was always catching cold, and snuffling because his nose ran.  This made him a nuisance, and a source of endless trouble in the family.  For his mother, with unnatural perversity, loved him best of all her children, and made a perpetual fuss over him—­would let him do anything undisturbed, and would burst into tears when his fretting drove Jurgis wild.