Summary

Jurgis travels back to Chicago with fifteen dollars in his pocket as winter begins. Jurgis begins to look for work, first at the steel mill and then at the local industrial plants. After a month, Jurgis answers an ad in a newspaper and gets a job digging tunnels for telephones. This proves to be a good job until Jurgis is hit in the shoulder by a runaway train. He wakes up in the hospital with a broken arm. When Jurgis is released from the hospital, he is unable to work and has nowhere to go. Jurgis ends up begging on the street.

While begging on the street, Jurgis runs into the son of one of the owners of the packing houses, Mr. Jones. This young man named Freddie hears Jurgis’s story and offers to take him home. When they stop to look...