He and the two women spent all day and half the night discussing it.  It would be convenient, downtown, to the children’s place of work; but then Marija was on the road to recovery, and had hopes of getting a job in the yards; and though she did not see her old-time lover once a month, because of the misery of their state, yet she could not make up her mind to go away and give him up forever.  Then, too, Elzbieta had heard something about a chance to scrub floors in Durham’s offices and was waiting every day for word.  In the end it was decided that Jurgis should go downtown to strike out for himself, and they would decide after he got a job.  As there was no one from whom he could borrow there, and he dared not beg for fear of being arrested, it was arranged that every day he should meet one of the children and be given fifteen cents of their earnings, upon which he could keep going.  Then all day he was to pace the streets with hundreds and thousands of other homeless wretches inquiring at stores, warehouses, and factories for a chance; and at night he was to crawl into some doorway or underneath a truck, and hide there until midnight, when he might get into one of the station houses, and spread a newspaper upon the floor, and lie down in the midst of a throng of “bums” and beggars, reeking with alcohol and tobacco, and filthy with vermin and disease.

So for two weeks more Jurgis fought with the demon of despair.  Once he got a chance to load a truck for half a day, and again he carried an old woman’s valise and was given a quarter.  This let him into a lodginghouse on several nights when he might otherwise have frozen to death; and it also gave him a chance now and then to buy a newspaper in the morning and hunt up jobs while his rivals were watching and waiting for a paper to be thrown away.  This, however, was really not the advantage it seemed, for the newspaper advertisements were a cause of much loss of precious time and of many weary journeys.  A full half of these were “fakes,” put in by the endless variety of establishments which preyed upon the helpless ignorance of the unemployed.  If Jurgis lost only his time, it was because he had nothing else to lose; whenever a smooth-tongued agent would tell him of the wonderful positions he had on hand, he could only shake his head sorrowfully and say that he had not the necessary dollar to deposit; when it was explained to him what “big money” he and all his family could make by coloring photographs, he could only promise to come in again when he had two dollars to invest in the outfit.

In the end Jurgis got a chance through an accidental meeting with an old-time acquaintance of his union days.  He met this man on his way to work in the giant factories of the Harvester Trust; and his friend told him to come along and he would speak a good word for him to his boss, whom he knew well.  So Jurgis trudged four or five miles, and passed through a waiting throng of unemployed at the gate under the escort of his friend.  His knees nearly gave way beneath him when the foreman, after looking him over and questioning him, told him that he could find an opening for him.