It was not an easy thing for Jurgis to take more than two or three drinks.  With the first drink he could eat a meal, and he could persuade himself that that was economy; with the second he could eat another meal—­but there would come a time when he could eat no more, and then to pay for a drink was an unthinkable extravagance, a defiance of the agelong instincts of his hunger-haunted class.  One day, however, he took the plunge, and drank up all that he had in his pockets, and went home half “piped,” as the men phrase it.  He was happier than he had been in a year; and yet, because he knew that the happiness would not last, he was savage, too with those who would wreck it, and with the world, and with his life; and then again, beneath this, he was sick with the shame of himself.  Afterward, when he saw the despair of his family, and reckoned up the money he had spent, the tears came into his eyes, and he began the long battle with the specter.

It was a battle that had no end, that never could have one.  But Jurgis did not realize that very clearly; he was not given much time for reflection.  He simply knew that he was always fighting.  Steeped in misery and despair as he was, merely to walk down the street was to be put upon the rack.  There was surely a saloon on the corner—­perhaps on all four corners, and some in the middle of the block as well; and each one stretched out a hand to him each one had a personality of its own, allurements unlike any other.  Going and coming—­before sunrise and after dark—­there was warmth and a glow of light, and the steam of hot food, and perhaps music, or a friendly face, and a word of good cheer.  Jurgis developed a fondness for having Ona on his arm whenever he went out on the street, and he would hold her tightly, and walk fast.  It was pitiful to have Ona know of this—­it drove him wild to think of it; the thing was not fair, for Ona had never tasted drink, and so could not understand.  Sometimes, in desperate hours, he would find himself wishing that she might learn what it was, so that he need not be ashamed in her presence.  They might drink together, and escape from the horror—­escape for a while, come what would.

So there came a time when nearly all the conscious life of Jurgis consisted of a struggle with the craving for liquor.  He would have ugly moods, when he hated Ona and the whole family, because they stood in his way.  He was a fool to have married; he had tied himself down, had made himself a slave.  It was all because he was a married man that he was compelled to stay in the yards; if it had not been for that he might have gone off like Jonas, and to hell with the packers.  There were few single men in the fertilizer mill—­and those few were working only for a chance to escape.  Meantime, too, they had something to think about while they worked,—­they had the memory of the last time they had been drunk, and the hope of the time when they would be drunk again.  As for Jurgis, he was expected to bring home every penny; he could not even go with the men at noontime—­he was supposed to sit down and eat his dinner on a pile of fertilizer dust.