away! And Jurgis would make the acquaintance of others
of these unemployed men and find that they had all had
the same experience. There were some, of course, who
had wandered in from other places, who had been ground
up in other mills; there were others who were out from
their own fault -- some, for instance, who had not been
able to stand the awful grind without drink. The vast
majority, however, were simply the worn-out parts of the
great merciless packing-machine; they had toiled there,
and kept up with the pace, some of them for ten or twenty
years, until finally the time had come when they could not
keep up with it any more. Some had been frankly told
that they were too old, that a sprier man was needed;
others had given occasion, by some act of carelessness or
incompetence; with most, however, the occasion had been
the same as with Jurgis. They had been overworked and
underfed so long, and finally some disease had laid them on
their backs; or they had cut themselves, and had blood~
poisoning, or met with some other accident. When a man
came back after that, he would get his place back only by
the courtesy of the boss. To this there was no exception,
save when the accident was one for which the firm was
liable; in that case they would send a slippery lawyer to
see him, first to try to get him to sign away his claims, but
if he was too smart for that, to promise him that he and
his should always be provided with work. This promise
they would keep, strictly and to the letter -- for two years.
Two years was the "statute of limitations," and after that
the victim could not sue.

What happened to a man after any of these things, all
depended upon the circumstances. If he were of the highly
skilled workers, he would probably have enough saved up
to tide him over. The best-paid men, the "splitters,"
made fifty cents an hour, which would be five or six dollars
a day in the rush seasons, and one or two in the dullest.
A man could live and save on that; but then there were
only half a dozen splitters in each place, and one of them
that Jurgis knew had a family of twenty-two children, all
hoping to grow up to be splitters like their father. For

[[148]]

p147 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p148w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p149

v?