organization society in the stockyards district, in all his life
there he had never heard of either of them. They did not
advertise their activities, having more calls than they could
attend to without that.

-- So on until morning. Then he had another ride in the
patrol wagon, along with the drunken wife-beater and the
maniac, several "plain drunks" and "saloon fighters," a
burglar, and two men who had been arrested for stealing
meat from the packing-houses. Along with them he was
driven into a large, white-walled room, stale-smelling and
crowded. In front, upon a raised platform behind a rail,
sat a stout, florid-faced personage, with a nose broken out
in purple blotches.

Our friend realized vaguely that he was about to be
tried. He wondered what for -- whether or not his vic~
tim might be dead, and if so, what they would do with
him. Hang him, perhaps, or beat him to death -- nothing
would have surprised Jurgis, who knew little of the laws.
Yet he had picked up gossip enough to have it occur to
him that the loud-voiced man upon the bench might be
the notorious Justice Callahan, about whom the people
of Packingtown spoke with bated breath.

"Pat" Callahan -- "Growler" Pat, as he had been
known before he ascended the bench -- had begun life
as a butcher-boy and a bruiser of local reputation; he had
gone into politics almost as soon as he had learned to talk,
and had held two offices at once before he was old enough
to vote. If Scully was the thumb, Pat Callahan was the
first finger of the unseen hand whereby the packers held
down the people of the district. No politician in Chicago
ranked higher in their confidence; he had been at it a
long time -- had been the business agent in the city coun~
cil of old Durham, the self-made merchant, way back in
the early days, when the whole city of Chicago had been
up at auction. "Growler" Pat had given up holding
city offices very early in his career -- caring only for party
power, and giving the rest of his time to superintending
his dives and brothels. Of late years, however, since
his children were growing up, he had begun to value

[[187]]

p186 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p187w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p188

v?