and sending for new ones. The Poles, who had come by
tens of thousands, had been driven to the wall by the
Lithuanians, and now the Lithuanians were giving way
to the Slovaks. Who there was poorer and more miser~
able than the Slovaks, Grandmother Majauszkiene had
no idea, but the packers would find them, never fear.
It was easy to bring them, for wages were really much
higher, and it was only when it was too late that the
poor people found out that everything else was higher
too. They were like rats in a trap, that was the truth;
and more of them were piling in every day. By and by
they would have their revenge, though, for the thing
was getting beyond human endurance, and the people
would rise and murder the packers. Grandmother
Majauszkiene was a socialist, or some such strange
thing; another son of hers was working in the mines
of Siberia, and the old lady herself had made speeches
in her time -- which made her seem all the more terrible
to her present auditors.

They called her back to the story of the house. The
German family had been a good sort. To be sure there
had been a great many of them, which was a common fail~
ing in Packingtown; but they had worked hard, and the
father had been a steady man, and they had a good deal
more than half paid for the house. But he had been
killed in an elevator accident in Durham's.

Then there had come the Irish, and there had been lots
of them, too; the husband drank and beat the children --
the neighbors could hear them shrieking any night. They
were behind with their rent all the time, but the company
was good to them; there was some politics back of that,
Grandmother Majauszkiene could not say just what, but
the Laffertys had belonged to the "War-Whoop League,"
which was a sort of political club of all the thugs and
rowdies in the district; and if you belonged to that, you
could never be arrested for anything. Once upon a time
old Lafferty had been caught with a gang that had stolen
cows from several of the poor people of the neighborhood
and butchered them in an old shanty back of the yards

[[79]]

p078 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p079w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p080

v?