In the morning before Jurgis had finished his breakfast, “Pat” Murphy ordered him to one of the superintendents, who questioned him as to his experience in the work of the killing room.  His heart began to thump with excitement, for he divined instantly that his hour had come—­that he was to be a boss!

Some of the foremen were union members, and many who were not had gone out with the men.  It was in the killing department that the packers had been left most in the lurch, and precisely here that they could least afford it; the smoking and canning and salting of meat might wait, and all the by-products might be wasted—­but fresh meats must be had, or the restaurants and hotels and brownstone houses would feel the pinch, and then “public opinion” would take a startling turn.

An opportunity such as this would not come twice to a man; and Jurgis seized it.  Yes, he knew the work, the whole of it, and he could teach it to others.  But if he took the job and gave satisfaction he would expect to keep it—­they would not turn him off at the end of the strike?  To which the superintendent replied that he might safely trust Durham’s for that—­they proposed to teach these unions a lesson, and most of all those foremen who had gone back on them.  Jurgis would receive five dollars a day during the strike, and twenty-five a week after it was settled.

So our friend got a pair of “slaughter pen” boots and “jeans,” and flung himself at his task.  It was a weird sight, there on the killing beds—­a throng of stupid black Negroes, and foreigners who could not understand a word that was said to them, mixed with pale-faced, hollow-chested bookkeepers and clerks, half-fainting for the tropical heat and the sickening stench of fresh blood—­and all struggling to dress a dozen or two cattle in the same place where, twenty-four hours ago, the old killing gang had been speeding, with their marvelous precision, turning out four hundred carcasses every hour!

The Negroes and the “toughs” from the Levee did not want to work, and every few minutes some of them would feel obliged to retire and recuperate.  In a couple of days Durham and Company had electric fans up to cool off the rooms for them, and even couches for them to rest on; and meantime they could go out and find a shady corner and take a “snooze,” and as there was no place for any one in particular, and no system, it might be hours before their boss discovered them.  As for the poor office employees, they did their best, moved to it by terror; thirty of them had been “fired” in a bunch that first morning for refusing to serve, besides a number of women clerks and typewriters who had declined to act as waitresses.