away from, and how to read the secret signs upon the
fences, and when to beg and when to steal, and just how
to do both. They laughed at his ideas of paying for any~
thing with money or with work -- for they got all they
wanted without either. Now and then Jurgis camped out
with a gang of them in some woodland haunt, and foraged
with them in the neighborhood at night. And then among
them someone would "take a shine" to him, and they
would go off together and travel for a week, exchanging
reminiscences.

Of these professional tramps a great many had, of course,
been shiftless and vicious all their lives. But the vast
majority of them had been working-men, had fought the
long fight as Jurgis had, and found that it was a losing
fight, and given up. Later on he encountered yet another
sort of men, those from whose ranks the tramps were
recruited, men who were homeless and wandering, but
still seeking work -- seeking it in the harvest-fields. Of
these there was an army, the huge surplus labor army of
society; called into being under the stern system of nature,
to do the casual work of the world, the tasks which were
transient and irregular, and yet which had to be done.
They did not know that they were such, of course; they
only knew that they sought the job, and that the job was
fleeting. In the early summer they would be in Texas,
and as the crops were ready they would follow north with
the season, ending with the fall in Manitoba. Then they
would seek out the big lumber-camps, where there was
winter work; or failing in this, would drift to the cities,
and live upon what they had managed to save, with the
help of such transient work as was there, -- the loading and
unloading of steamships and drays, the digging of ditches
and the shoveling of snow. If there were more of them
on hand than chanced to be needed, the weaker ones died
off of cold and hunger, again according to the stern sys~
tem of nature.

It was in the latter part of July, when Jurgis was in
Missouri, that he came upon the harvest-work. Here were
crops that men had worked for three or four months to

[[260]]

p259 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p260w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p261

v?