the tidings that he had earned more than a dollar and a
half in a single day!

At home, also, there was more good news; so much of
it at once that there was quite a celebration in Aniele's
hall bedroom. Jonas had been to have an interview with
the special policeman to whom Szedvilas had introduced
him, and had been taken to see several of the bosses, with
the result that one had promised him a job the beginning
of the next week. And then there was Marija Bercz~
ynskas, who, fired with jealousy by the success of Jurgis,
had set out upon her own responsibility to get a place.
Marija had nothing to take with her save her two brawny
arms and the word "job," laboriously learned; but with
these she had marched about Packingtown all day, enter~
ing every door where there were signs of activity. Out
of some she had been ordered with curses; but Marija
was not afraid of man or devil, and asked everyone she
saw -- visitors and strangers, or work-people like herself,
and once or twice even high and lofty office personages,
who stared at her as if they thought she was crazy. In
the end, however, she had reaped her reward. In one of
the smaller plants she had stumbled upon a room where
scores of women and girls were sitting at long tables pre~
paring smoked beef in cans; and wandering through room
after room, Marija came at last to the place where the
sealed cans were being painted and labeled, and here she
had the good fortune to encounter the "forelady." Marija
did not understand then, as she was destined to understand
later, what there was attractive to a "forelady" about the
combination of a face full of boundless good nature and
the muscles of a dray horse; but the woman had told her
to come the next day and she would perhaps give her a
chance to learn the trade of painting cans. The painting
of cans being skilled piece-work, and paying as much as
two dollars a day, Marija burst in upon the family with
the yell of a Comanche Indian, and fell to capering about
the room so as to frighten the baby almost into convul~
sions.

Better luck than all this could hardly have been hoped

[[50]]

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