It was in a newly opened cut that Jurgis worked, and so he knew that he had an all-winter job.  He was so rejoiced that he treated himself to a spree that night, and with the balance of his money he hired himself a place in a tenement room, where he slept upon a big homemade straw mattress along with four other workingmen.  This was one dollar a week, and for four more he got his food in a boardinghouse near his work.  This would leave him four dollars extra each week, an unthinkable sum for him.  At the outset he had to pay for his digging tools, and also to buy a pair of heavy boots, since his shoes were falling to pieces, and a flannel shirt, since the one he had worn all summer was in shreds.  He spent a week meditating whether or not he should also buy an overcoat.  There was one belonging to a Hebrew collar button peddler, who had died in the room next to him, and which the landlady was holding for her rent; in the end, however, Jurgis decided to do without it, as he was to be underground by day and in bed at night.

This was an unfortunate decision, however, for it drove him more quickly than ever into the saloons.  From now on Jurgis worked from seven o’clock until half-past five, with half an hour for dinner; which meant that he never saw the sunlight on weekdays.  In the evenings there was no place for him to go except a barroom; no place where there was light and warmth, where he could hear a little music or sit with a companion and talk.  He had now no home to go to; he had no affection left in his life—­only the pitiful mockery of it in the camaraderie of vice.  On Sundays the churches were open—­but where was there a church in which an ill-smelling workingman, with vermin crawling upon his neck, could sit without seeing people edge away and look annoyed?  He had, of course, his corner in a close though unheated room, with a window opening upon a blank wall two feet away; and also he had the bare streets, with the winter gales sweeping through them; besides this he had only the saloons—­and, of course, he had to drink to stay in them.  If he drank now and then he was free to make himself at home, to gamble with dice or a pack of greasy cards, to play at a dingy pool table for money, or to look at a beer-stained pink “sporting paper,” with pictures of murderers and half-naked women.  It was for such pleasures as these that he spent his money; and such was his life during the six weeks and a half that he toiled for the merchants of Chicago, to enable them to break the grip of their teamsters’ union.

In a work thus carried out, not much thought was given to the welfare of the laborers.  On an average, the tunneling cost a life a day and several manglings; it was seldom, however, that more than a dozen or two men heard of any one accident.  The work was all done by the new boring machinery, with as little blasting as possible; but there would be falling rocks and crushed supports, and premature explosions—­and in addition all the dangers of railroading.  So it was that one night, as Jurgis was on his way out with his gang, an engine and a loaded car dashed round one of the innumerable right-angle branches and struck him upon the shoulder, hurling him against the concrete wall and knocking him senseless.