man Jones was great on missions and such things, and so
whenever they were doing some particularly disreputable
job, the men would wink at each other and say, "Now
we're working for the church!"

One of the consequences of all these things was that
Jurgis was no longer perplexed when he heard men talk
of fighting for their rights. He felt like fighting now
himself; and when the Irish delegate of the butcher-
helpers' union came to him a second time, he received him
in a far different spirit. A wonderful idea it now seemed
to Jurgis, this of the men -- that by combining they
might be able to make a stand and conquer the packers!
Jurgis wondered who had first thought of it; and when
he was told that it was a common thing for men to do in
America, he got the first inkling of a meaning in the
phrase "a free country." The delegate explained to him
how it depended upon their being able to get every man
to join and stand by the organization, and so Jurgis sig~
nified that he was willing to do his share. Before another
month was by, all the working members of his family had
union cards, and wore their union buttons conspicuously
and with pride. For fully a week they were quite bliss~
fully happy, thinking that belonging to a union meant an
end of all their troubles.

But only ten days after she had joined, Marija's canning-
factory closed down, and that blow quite staggered them.
They could not understand why the union had not pre~
vented it, and the very first time she attended a meeting
Marija got up and made a speech about it. It was a
business meeting, and was transacted in English, but
that made no difference to Marija; she said what was in
her, and all the pounding of the chairman's gavel and all
the uproar and confusion in the room could not prevail.
Quite apart from her own troubles she was boiling over
with a general sense of the injustice of it, and she told
what she thought of the packers, and what she thought
of a world where such things were allowed to happen;
and then, while the echoes of the hall rang with the shock
of her terrible voice, she sat down again and fanned her~

[[105]]

p104 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p105w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p106

v?