There was no bringing order out of such a chaos, Jurgis
soon discovered; and he fell in with the spirit of the thing
-- there was no reason why he should wear himself out
with shouting. If hides and guts were slashed and ren~
dered useless there was no way of tracing it to any one;
and if a man lay off and forgot to come back there was
nothing to be gained by seeking him, for all the rest would
quit in the meantime. Everything went, during the strike,
and the packers paid. Before long Jurgis found that the
custom of resting had suggested to some alert minds the
possibility of registering at more than one place and earn~
ing more than one five dollars a day. When he caught a
man at this he "fired" him, but it chanced to be in a quiet
corner, and the man tendered him a ten-dollar bill and a
wink, and he took them. Of course, before long this cus~
tom spread, and Jurgis was soon making quite a good
income from it.

In the face of handicaps such as these the packers
counted themselves lucky if they could kill off the cattle
that had been crippled in transit and the hogs that had
developed disease. Frequently, in the course of a two or
three days' trip, in hot weather and without water, some
hog would develop cholera, and die; and the rest would
attack him before he had ceased kicking, and when the car
was opened there would be nothing of him left but the
bones. If all the hogs in this car-load were not killed at
once, they would soon be down with the dread disease, and
there would be nothing to do but make them into lard.
It was the same with cattle that were gored and dying, or
were limping with broken bones stuck through their flesh
-- they must be killed, even if brokers and buyers and
superintendents had to take off their coats and help drive
and cut and skin them. And meantime, agents of the
packers were gathering gangs of Negroes in the country
districts of the far South, promising them five dollars a day
and board, and being careful not to mention there was a
strike; already car-loads of them were on the way, with
special rates from the railroads, and all traffic ordered out
of the way. Many towns and cities were taking advantage

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p322 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p323w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p324

v?