little man who folded hides on the killing-beds, and he
listened to what Jurgis had to say without seeming at all
surprised. They were common enough, he said, such
cases of petty graft. It was simply some boss who pro~
posed to add a little to his income. After Jurgis had
been there awhile he would know that the plants were
simply honeycombed with rottenness of that sort -- the
bosses grafted off the men, and they grafted off each
other; and some day the superintendent would find out
about the boss, and then he would graft off the boss.
Warming to the subject, Tamoszius went on to explain
the situation. Here was Durham's, for instance, owned by
a man who was trying to make as much money out of it
as he could, and did not care in the least how he did it;
and underneath him, ranged in ranks and grades like an
army, were managers and superintendents and foremen,
each one driving the man next below him and trying to
squeeze out of him as much work as possible. And all
the men of the same rank were pitted against each other;
the accounts of each were kept separately, and every man
lived in terror of losing his job, if another made a better
record than he. So from top to bottom the place was
simply a seething cauldron of jealousies and hatreds;
there was no loyalty or decency anywhere about it,
there was no place in it where a man counted for any~
thing against a dollar. And worse than there being no
decency, there was not even any honesty. The reason
for that? Who could say? It must have been old
Durham in the beginning; it was a heritage which the
self-made merchant had left to his son, along with his
millions.

Jurgis would find out these things for himself, if he
stayed there long enough; it was the men who had to do
all the dirty jobs, and so there was no deceiving them;
and they caught the spirit of the place, and did like all
the rest. Jurgis had come there, and thought he was
going to make himself useful, and rise and become a
skilled man; but he would soon find out his error -- for
nobody rose in Packingtown by doing good work. You

[[70]]

p069 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p070w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p071

v?