children's place of work; but then Marija was on the
road to recovery, and had hopes of getting a job in
the yards; and though she did not see her old-time lover
once a month, because of the misery of their state, yet she
could not make up her mind to go away and give him up
forever. Then, too, Elzbieta had heard something about
a chance to scrub floors in Durham's offices, and was
waiting every day for word. In the end it was decided
that Jurgis should go down-town to strike out for himself,
and they would decide after he got a job. As there was
no one from whom he could borrow there, and he dared
not beg for fear of being arrested, it was arranged that
every day he should meet one of the children and be given
fifteen cents of their earnings, upon which he could keep
going. Then all day he was to pace the streets with
hundreds and thousands of other homeless wretches, inquir~
ing at stores, warehouses, and factories for a chance; and
at night he was to crawl into some doorway or underneath
a truck, and hide there until midnight, when he might get
into one of the station-houses, and spread a newspaper
upon the floor, and lie down in the midst of a throng of
"bums" and beggars, reeking with alcohol and tobacco,
and filthy with vermin and disease.

So for two weeks more Jurgis fought with the demon
of despair. Once he got a chance to load a truck for half
a day, and again he carried an old woman's valise and was
given a quarter. This let him into a lodging-house on
several nights when he might otherwise have frozen to
death; and it also gave him a chance now and then to
buy a newspaper in the morning and hunt up jobs while
his rivals were watching and waiting for a paper to be
thrown away. This, however, was really not the advan~
tage it seemed, for the newspaper advertisements were a
cause of much loss of precious time and of many weary
journeys. A full half of these were "fakes," put in by
the endless variety of establishments which preyed upon
the helpless ignorance of the unemployed. If Jurgis lost
only his time, it was because he had nothing else to lose;

[[235]]

p234 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p235w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p236

v?