There were ups and downs at the business; but there was always a living, inside of a jail, if not out of it.  Early in April the city elections were due, and that meant prosperity for all the powers of graft.  Jurgis, hanging round in dives and gambling houses and brothels, met with the heelers of both parties, and from their conversation he came to understand all the ins and outs of the game, and to hear of a number of ways in which he could make himself useful about election time.  “Buck” Halloran was a “Democrat,” and so Jurgis became a Democrat also; but he was not a bitter one—­the Republicans were good fellows, too, and were to have a pile of money in this next campaign.  At the last election the Republicans had paid four dollars a vote to the Democrats’ three; and “Buck” Halloran sat one night playing cards with Jurgis and another man, who told how Halloran had been charged with the job voting a “bunch” of thirty-seven newly landed Italians, and how he, the narrator, had met the Republican worker who was after the very same gang, and how the three had effected a bargain, whereby the Italians were to vote half and half, for a glass of beer apiece, while the balance of the fund went to the conspirators!

Not long after this, Jurgis, wearying of the risks and vicissitudes of miscellaneous crime, was moved to give up the career for that of a politician.  Just at this time there was a tremendous uproar being raised concerning the alliance between the criminals and the police.  For the criminal graft was one in which the businessmen had no direct part—­it was what is called a “side line,” carried by the police.  “Wide open” gambling and debauchery made the city pleasing to “trade,” but burglaries and holdups did not.  One night it chanced that while Jack Duane was drilling a safe in a clothing store he was caught red-handed by the night watchman, and turned over to a policeman, who chanced to know him well, and who took the responsibility of letting him make his escape.  Such a howl from the newspapers followed this that Duane was slated for sacrifice, and barely got out of town in time.  And just at that juncture it happened that Jurgis was introduced to a man named Harper whom he recognized as the night watchman at Brown’s, who had been instrumental in making him an American citizen, the first year of his arrival at the yards.  The other was interested in the coincidence, but did not remember Jurgis—­he had handled too many “green ones” in his time, he said.  He sat in a dance hall with Jurgis and Halloran until one or two in the morning, exchanging experiences.  He had a long story to tell of his quarrel with the superintendent of his department, and how he was now a plain workingman, and a good union man as well.  It was not until some months afterward that Jurgis understood that the quarrel with the superintendent had been prearranged, and that Harper was in reality drawing a salary of twenty dollars a week from the packers for an inside report of his union’s secret proceedings.  The yards were seething with agitation just then, said the man, speaking as a unionist.  The people of Packingtown had borne about all that they would bear, and it looked as if a strike might begin any week.