walk and look about them, to see more of this district
which was to be their home. In back of the yards the
dreary two-story frame houses were scattered farther
apart, and there were great spaces bare -- that seemingly
had been overlooked by the great sore of a city as it
spread itself over the surface of the prairie. These bare
places were grown up with dingy, yellow weeds, hiding
innumerable tomato-cans; innumerable children played
upon them, chasing one another here and there, scream~
ing and fighting. The most uncanny thing about this
neighborhood was the number of the children; you
thought there must be a school just out, and it was only
after long acquaintance that you were able to realize that
there was no school, but that these were the children of
the neighborhood -- that there were so many children to
the block in Packingtown that nowhere on its streets
could a horse and buggy move faster than a walk!

It could not move faster anyhow, on account of the
state of the streets. Those through which Jurgis and
Ona were walking resembled streets less than they did
a miniature topographical map. The roadway was com~
monly several feet lower than the level of the houses,
which were sometimes joined by high board walks; there
were no pavements -- there were mountains and valleys
and rivers, gullies and ditches, and great hollows full of
stinking green water. In these pools the children played,
and rolled about in the mud of the streets; here and there
one noticed them digging in it, after trophies which they
had stumbled on. One wondered about this, as also
about the swarms of flies which hung about the scene,
literally blackening the air, and the strange, fetid odor
which assailed one's nostrils, a ghastly odor, of all the
dead things of the universe. It impelled the visitor
to questions -- and then the residents would explain,
quietly, that all this was "made" land, and that it had
been "made" by using it as a dumping-ground for the
city garbage. After a few years the unpleasant effect of
this would pass away, it was said; but meantime, in hot
weather -- and especially when it rained -- the flies were

[[32]]

p031 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p032w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p033

v?