wash his hands, and use a knife and fork, but were not his
mouth and throat filled with the poison?

And still Jurgis stuck it out! In spite of splitting
headaches he would stagger down to the plant and take
up his stand once more, and begin to shovel in the blinding
clouds of dust. And so at the end of the week he was a
fertilizer-man for life -- he was able to eat again, and
though his head never stopped aching, it ceased to be so
bad that he could not work.

So there passed another summer. It was a summer of
prosperity, all over the country, and the country ate gen~
erously of packing-house products, and there was plenty
of work for all the family, in spite of the packers' efforts
to keep a superfluity of labor. They were again able to
pay their debts and to begin to save a little sum; but
there were one or two sacrifices they considered too heavy
to be made for long -- it was too bad that the boys
should have to sell papers at their age. It was utterly
useless to caution them and plead with them; quite with~
out knowing it, they were taking on the tone of their new
environment. They were learning to swear in voluble
English; they were learning to pick up cigar-stumps and
smoke them, to pass hours of their time gambling with
pennies and dice and cigarette-cards; they were learning
the location of all the houses of prostitution on the
"Levee," and the names of the "madames" who kept
them, and the days when they gave their state banquets,
which the police captains and the big politicians all
attended. If a visiting "country customer" were to ask
them, they could show him which was "Hinkydink's"
famous saloon, and could even point out to him by name
the different gamblers and thugs and "hold-up men" who
made the place their headquarters. And worse yet, the
boys were getting out of the habit of coming home at
night. What was the use, they would ask, of wasting
time and energy and a possible car-fare riding out to the
stockyards every night when the weather was pleasant
and they could crawl under a truck or into an empty door~

[[156]]

p155 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p156w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p157

v?