day during the strike, and twenty-five a week after it was
settled.

So our friend got a pair of "slaughter-pen" boots and
"jeans," and flung himself at his task. It was a weird
sight, there on the killing-beds -- a throng of stupid black
Negroes, and foreigners who could not understand a word
that was said to them, mixed with pale-faced, hollow-
chested bookkeepers and clerks, half-fainting for the
tropical heat and the sickening stench of fresh blood --
and all struggling to dress a dozen or two of cattle in the
same place where, twenty-four hours ago, the old killing-
gang had been speeding, with their marvelous precision,
turning out four hundred carcasses every hour!

The Negroes and the "toughs" from the Levee did not
want to work, and every few minutes some of them would
feel obliged to retire and recuperate. In a couple of days
Durham and Company had electric fans up to cool off the
rooms for them, and even couches for them to rest on; and
meantime they could go out and find a shady corner and
take a "snooze," and as there was no place for any one in
particular, and no system, it might be hours before their
boss discovered them. As for the poor office employees,
they did their best, moved to it by terror; thirty of them
had been "fired" in a bunch that first morning for refus~
ing to serve, besides a number of women clerks and
typewriters who had declined to act as waitresses.

It was such a force as this that Jurgis had to organize.
He did his best, flying here and there, placing them in
rows and showing them the tricks; he had never given an
order in his life before, but he had taken enough of them
to know, and he soon fell into the spirit of it, and roared
and stormed like any old stager. He had not the most
tractable pupils, however. "See hyar, boss," a big black
"buck" would begin, "ef you doan' like de way Ah does
dis job, you kin git somebody else to do it." Then a crowd
would gather and listen, muttering threats. After the first
meal nearly all the steel knives had been missing, and now
every Negro had one, ground to a fine point, hidden in his
boots.

[[322]]

p321 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p322w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p323

v?