The sun. (Jacksonville, Fla.) 1905-1908, 1906-08-18

MS surprise, ne found that IL nau
tendency to get him into trouble For
most OF the men here took a fearfully
different view of the thing. He was
quite dismayed when he first began
to find It out--that most OF the men
hated their work. 1t seemed strange,
Il was even terrible, when you came
to find out the universally OF the
sentiment; but 1t was certainly the
fact-they hated their work. They
hated the bossec and they hated tho
owners; they hated the whole place,
the whole neighborhood- the
whole city, with an all.inclusive ha-
tired, bitter and fierce, Women and
little children would fall to cursing
about It; 1t was rotten, rotten as hell
everything was rotten. When Jur-
gis would ask them what they meant.
they would begin to get suspicious,
and content themselves with saying,
Never mind, you stay here and sea
for yourself"
One Of the frst problems that Jur-
gis ran upon was that Of the unions.
He had had no experience with un-
ions, and he had to have 1t explained
10 him that the men were banded to-
gether for the purpose OF fighting for
their rights, Juigis asked them whaS
they meant by their rights, a question
In which he was quite sincere, for b.
had not any idea Of any rights that he
had, except the right to hunt for q
job, and do as he was told when he
got II. Generally however, this harnl-
less question would on.y make his fel'
low.wOrkingmen lose their tempers
and call him q fool. There was I
delegate Of the Butcher Helpers I'm.
ion who came to see Jurgis to enroll
him, and when Jurgis found that this
meant that he would have to part
with some of his money, he froze uD
directly, and the delegate, who was
an Irishman, and only knew a few
words of Lithuanian, lost his temper
and began to threaten him. In thu
end Jurgis got into fine rage, anu
made It sufficiently plain that Il
would take more than one Irishman
to scare him into q union, Little by
little he gathered that the main
thing the men wanted was to put
stop to the habit Of speeding up
they were trying their best to force
lessening of the pace, for there were
some. they said, who could not keep no
with It, whom It was killing. But
Jurgis had no sympathy with sucl
ideas as this--he could do the work
himself, and so could the rest of them,
he declared, IL they were good TO-.
snything. II they couldn't do 1t, let
them 60 somewhere else. Jurgis hal
not studied the books and he would
not have known how to pronounce
"laissezfaire;" but he had been round
the world enough to know that a man
has to shift for himself in Il, and that
II he gets the worst Of It, there Is no.
body to listen to him holler. t
Yet there have been known to be
philosophers and plain men who
swore by Nautilus In the books. ann
would, nevertheless, subscribe to re.
lief fund in time of famine. Il was
the same with Jurgis, who consigned
the unfit TIC destruction, while going
about all day sick at heart because
Of his poor old father, who was wan
dering some where In the yards beg.
ging for chance To earn his brea.l.
Old Antanas had been worker ever
since he was a child; he had run away
from home when he was twelve be-
cause his father beat him for trying 10
learn to read. And he was q faithful
man, too; he was man you might
leave alone for a month, II only yon
had made him understand what you
wanted him to do In the meantima.
And now here he was, worn out In
soul and body, and with no moro place
In the world than sick dog. He
had his home. as Il happened. AMI
some one who would care for him II
he never got Job; but his son coui I
not help thinking, suppose this ha /
not been the case? Antanas Rudkus