the rest did. Those out-of-work wretches would stand
about the packing-houses every morning till the police
drove them away, and then they would scatter among the
saloons. Very few of them had the nerve to face the re~
buffs that they would encounter by trying to get into the
buildings to interview the bosses; if they did not get a
chance in the morning, there would be nothing to do but
hang about the saloons the rest of the day and night.
Jurgis was saved from all this -- partly, to be sure, be~
cause it was pleasant weather, and there was no need to be
indoors; but mainly because he carried with him always
the pitiful little face of his wife. He must get work, he
told himself, fighting the battle with despair every hour of
the day. He must get work! He must have a place
again and some money saved up, before the next winter
came.

But there was no work for him. He sought out all the
members of his union -- Jurgis had stuck to the union
through all this -- and begged them to speak a word for
him. He went to everyone he knew, asking for a chance,
there or anywhere. He wandered all day through the
buildings; and in a week or two, when he had been all
over the yards, and into every room to which he had
access, and learned that there was not a job anywhere, he
persuaded himself that there might have been a change
in the places he had first visited, and began the round all
over; till finally the watchmen and the "spotters" of the
companies came to know him by sight and to order him
out with threats. Then there was nothing more for him
to do but go with the crowd in the morning, and keep
in the front row and look eager, and when he failed, go
back home, and play with little Kotrina and the baby.

The peculiar bitterness of all this was that Jurgis saw
so plainly the meaning of it. In the beginning he had
been fresh and strong, and he had gotten a job the first
day; but now he was second-hand, a damaged article, so to
speak, and they did not want him. They had got the best
out of him, -- they had worn him out, with their speeding-
up and their carelessness, and now they had thrown him

[[147]]

p146 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p147w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p148

v?