was not always their fault; for the packers kept them frightened for their lives—­and when one was in danger of falling behind the standard, what was easier than to catch up by making the gang work awhile “for the church”?  This was a savage witticism the men had, which Jurgis had to have explained to him.  Old man Jones was great on missions and such things, and so whenever they were doing some particularly disreputable job, the men would wink at each other and say, “Now we’re working for the church!”

One of the consequences of all these things was that Jurgis was no longer perplexed when he heard men talk of fighting for their rights.  He felt like fighting now himself; and when the Irish delegate of the butcher-helpers’ union came to him a second time, he received him in a far different spirit.  A wonderful idea it now seemed to Jurgis, this of the men—­that by combining they might be able to make a stand and conquer the packers!  Jurgis wondered who had first thought of it; and when he was told that it was a common thing for men to do in America, he got the first inkling of a meaning in the phrase “a free country.”  The delegate explained to him how it depended upon their being able to get every man to join and stand by the organization, and so Jurgis signified that he was willing to do his share.  Before another month was by, all the working members of his family had union cards, and wore their union buttons conspicuously and with pride.  For fully a week they were quite blissfully happy, thinking that belonging to a union meant an end to all their troubles.

But only ten days after she had joined, Marija’s canning factory closed down, and that blow quite staggered them.  They could not understand why the union had not prevented it, and the very first time she attended a meeting Marija got up and made a speech about it.  It was a business meeting, and was transacted in English, but that made no difference to Marija; she said what was in her, and all the pounding of the chairman’s gavel and all the uproar and confusion in the room could not prevail.  Quite apart from her own troubles she was boiling over with a general sense of the injustice of it, and she told what she thought of the packers, and what she thought of a world where such things were allowed to happen; and then, while the echoes of the hall rang with the shock of her terrible voice, she sat down again and fanned herself, and the meeting gathered itself together and proceeded to discuss the election of a recording secretary.

Jurgis too had an adventure the first time he attended a union meeting, but it was not of his own seeking.  Jurgis had gone with the desire to get into an inconspicuous corner and see what was done; but this attitude of silent and open-eyed attention had marked him out for a victim.  Tommy Finnegan was a little Irishman, with big staring eyes and a wild aspect, a “hoister” by trade, and badly cracked.  Somewhere back in the far-distant past Tommy Finnegan had had a strange