whenever a smooth-tongued agent would tell him of the
wonderful positions he had on hand, he could only shake
his head sorrowfully and say that he had not the necessary
dollar to deposit; when it was explained to him what
"big money" he and all his family could make by color~
ing photographs, he could only promise to come in again
when he had two dollars to invest in the outfit.

In the end Jurgis got a chance through an accidental
meeting with an old-time acquaintance of his union days.
He met this man on his way to work in the giant factories
of the Harvester Trust; and his friend told him to come
along and he would speak a good word for him to his
boss, whom he knew well. So Jurgis trudged four or five
miles, and passed through a waiting throng of unemployed
at the gate under the escort of his friend. His knees
nearly gave way beneath him when the foreman, after
looking him over and questioning him, told him that he
could find an opening for him.

How much this accident meant to Jurgis he realized
only by stages; for he found that the harvester-works
were the sort of place to which philanthropists and
reformers pointed with pride. It had some thought for
its employees; its workshops were big and roomy, it pro~
vided a restaurant where the workmen could buy good
food at cost, it had even a reading-room, and decent places
where its girl-hands could rest; also the work was free
from many of the elements of filth and repulsiveness that
prevailed at the stockyards. Day after day Jurgis dis~
covered these things -- things never expected nor dreamed
of by him -- until this new place came to seem a kind of a
heaven to him.

It was an enormous establishment, covering a hundred
and sixty acres of ground, employing five thousand people,
and turning out over three hundred thousand machines
every year -- a good part of all the harvesting and mow~
ing machines used in the country. Jurgis saw very little
of it, of course -- it was all specialized work, the same as
at the stockyards; each one of the hundreds of parts of
a mowing-machine was made separately, and sometimes

[[236]]

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