prepare, and of which they would lose nearly all unless
they could find others to help them for a week or two.
So all over the land there was a cry for labor -- agencies
were set up and all the cities were drained of men, even
college boys were brought by the car-load, and hordes of
frantic farmers would hold up trains and carry off wagon-
loads of men by main force. Not that they did not pay
them well -- any man could get two dollars a day and his
board, and the best men could get two dollars and a half
or three.

The harvest-fever was in the very air, and no man with
any spirit in him could be in that region and not catch it.
Jurgis joined a gang and worked from dawn till dark,
eighteen hours a day, for two weeks without a break.
Then he had a sum of money that would have been a for~
tune to him in the old days of misery -- but what could
he do with it now? To be sure he might have put it in a
bank, and, if he were fortunate, get it back again when he
wanted it. But Jurgis was now a homeless man, wander~
ing over a continent; and what did he know about bank~
ing and drafts and letters of credit? If he carried the
money about with him, he would surely be robbed in the
end; and so what was there for him to do but enjoy it
while he could? On a Saturday night he drifted into a
town with his fellows; and because it was raining, and
there was no other place provided for him, he went to a
saloon. And there were some who treated him and whom
he had to treat, and there was laughter and singing and
good cheer; and then out of the rear part of the saloon a
girl's face, red-cheeked and merry, smiled at Jurgis, and
his heart thumped suddenly in his throat. He nodded to
her, and she came and sat by him, and they had more
drink, and then he went upstairs into a room with her, and
the wild beast rose up within him and screamed, as it has
screamed in the jungle from the dawn of time. And then
because of his memories and his shame, he was glad when
others joined them, men and women; and they had more
drink and spent the night in wild rioting and debauchery.
In the van of the surplus-labor army, there followed

[[261]]

p260 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p261w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p262

v?