Jurgis became once more a besieger of factory gates.
But never since he had been in Chicago had he stood less
chance of getting a job than just then. For one thing,
there was the economic crisis, the million or two of men
who had been out of work in the spring and summer, and
were not yet all back, by any means. And then there
was the strike, with seventy thousand men and women all
over the country idle for a couple of months -- twenty
thousand in Chicago, and many of them now seeking work
throughout the city. It did not remedy matters that a
few days later the strike was given up and about half the
strikers went back to work; for every one taken on,
there was a "scab" who gave up and fled. The ten or
fifteen thousand "green" Negroes, foreigners, and criminals
were now being turned loose to shift for themselves.
Everywhere Jurgis went he kept meeting them, and he
was in an agony of fear least some one of them should
know that he was "wanted." He would have left
Chicago, only by the time he had realized his danger he
was almost penniless; and it would be better to go to jail
than to be caught out in the country in the winter-time.

At the end of about ten days Jurgis had only a few
pennies left; and he had not yet found a job -- not even
a day's work at anything, not a chance to carry a satchel.
Once again, as when he had come out of the hospital, he
was bound hand and foot, and facing the grisly phantom
of starvation. Raw, naked terror possessed him, a madden~
ing passion that would never leave him, and that wore him
down more quickly than the actual want of food. He was
going to die of hunger! The fiend reached out its scaly
arms for him -- it touched him, its breath came into his
face; and he would cry out for the awfulness of it, he
would wake up in the night, shuddering, and bathed in
perspiration, and start up and flee. He would walk, beg~
ging for work, until he was exhausted; he could not remain
still -- he would wander on, gaunt and haggard, gazing
about him with restless eyes. Everywhere he went, from
one end of the vast city to the other, there were hundreds of
others like him; everywhere was the sight of plenty --

[[336]]

p335 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p336w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p337

v?