And so Ona went back to Brown’s and saved her place and a week’s wages; and so she gave herself some one of the thousand ailments that women group under the title of “womb trouble,” and was never again a well person as long as she lived.  It is difficult to convey in words all that this meant to Ona; it seemed such a slight offense, and the punishment was so out of all proportion, that neither she nor any one else ever connected the two.  “Womb trouble” to Ona did not mean a specialist’s diagnosis, and a course of treatment, and perhaps an operation or two; it meant simply headaches and pains in the back, and depression and heartsickness, and neuralgia when she had to go to work in the rain.  The great majority of the women who worked in Packingtown suffered in the same way, and from the same cause, so it was not deemed a thing to see the doctor about; instead Ona would try patent medicines, one after another, as her friends told her about them.  As these all contained alcohol, or some other stimulant, she found that they all did her good while she took them; and so she was always chasing the phantom of good health, and losing it because she was too poor to continue.

Chapter 11

During the summer the packing houses were in full activity again, and Jurgis made more money.  He did not make so much, however, as he had the previous summer, for the packers took on more hands.  There were new men every week, it seemed—­it was a regular system; and this number they would keep over to the next slack season, so that every one would have less than ever.  Sooner or later, by this plan, they would have all the floating labor of Chicago trained to do their work.  And how very cunning a trick was that!  The men were to teach new hands, who would some day come and break their strike; and meantime they were kept so poor that they could not prepare for the trial!

But let no one suppose that this superfluity of employees meant easier work for any one!  On the contrary, the speeding-up seemed to be growing more savage all the time; they were continually inventing new devices to crowd the work on—­it was for all the world like the thumbscrew of the medieval torture chamber.  They would get new pacemakers and pay them more; they would drive the men on with new machinery—­it was said that in the hog-killing rooms the speed at which the hogs moved was determined by clockwork, and that it was increased a little every day.  In piecework they would reduce the time, requiring the same work in a shorter time, and paying the same wages; and then, after the workers had accustomed themselves to this new speed, they would reduce the rate of payment to correspond with the reduction in time!  They had done this so often in the canning establishments that the girls were fairly desperate; their wages had gone down by a full third in the past two years, and a storm of discontent was brewing that was likely to break any day.  Only a month after