The sun. (Jacksonville, Fla.) 1905-1908, 1906-09-01
September |, 1906
THE JUNGLE

Inc company mad sent WORD 10 nlm
that they would keep Il for him--0r
rather Jurgis had bribed one of the
men to come one Sunday afternoon
and say they had Dede Antanas con-
tinued to believe It, while three moro
heinOrrhages came; and then at last
one morning they found him stir and
cold. Things were not going well
with them then, and though II nearly
broke Teta Elzbieta's heart, they were
forced to dispense with nearly all the
decencies Of a funeral; they had only
hearse, and one hack for the wr
men and children; and Jurgis, who
was learning fast, spent all day Sun.
day making bargain for these, and
he made It In the presence of Wit.
flesses, so that when the man tried to
charge him for all sorts OF inciden.
tails, he did not have to pay. For
twenty-five years old Antanas Rudktis'
and his son had dwelt In the forest to-
gether and 1t was hard to part In this
way; perhaps It was just as well that
Jurgis had to give all his attention IT,
the task Of having funeral without
being bankrupted, and so had no timo
to indulge In memories and grief.
Now the dreadful winter was come
upon them. In the forests, all sum-
mer long, the branches of the trees do
battle for light, and some of them lose
and die; and then come the raging
blasts, and the storms of snow ami
hail, and strew the ground with these
weaker branches. Just so II was jn
Packingtown; the whole district brac-
ed itself for the struggle that was an
come died of In hordes All the year
round they had been serving as cogs
In the great packing machine; and
now was the time for the renOvating
OF 1t, and the replacing of damaged
parts. There came pneumonia and
grippe, stalking among them, seeking
for weakened constitutions; there
was the annual harvest of those
W ON tuberculosis had been dragging
down. There came cruel, cold and
biting winds, and billiards. of snow,
all testing relentlcssly for failing
muscles and impoverished blood
Sooner or later came the day when
the unfit one did not report for work;
ana then, with no time in waiting,
and no inquiries or regrets, there was
chance for a new nand.
The new hands were here by tho
thousands. All day long the gates Of
Lne packing houses were besieged
by starving and penniless men; they
came literally by the thousands every
single morning, fighting with each
other for chance for life Billiards
and cold made no difference to them
they were always on hand; they
were on hand two hours before the
sun rose, an hour before the work b9-
gan. Sometimes their faces froze,
sometimes their feet and their hands,
sometimes they froze all together
but still they came for they had 40
other place to go.
One day Durham advertised In the
paper for two hundred men to cut ice;
and all that day the homeless and
starving of the city came trudging
through the snow from all over It's
two hundred square miles. That
night forty score of them crowded in
to the station house of the stock
yards district-they filled the rooms,
sleeping In each others laps. tobOg.
gan fashion, and they piled on top OF
each other In the corridors till the
police shut the doors and left some to
freeze outside. On the morrow, be-
fore daybreak, there were three thou
sand at Durham's, and the police re-
serves had to be sent for to quell the
riot. Then Durham's bosses picked
out twenty OF the biggest; the two
hundred" proved to have been prfn'
ter's error.
Four or Ave miles to the eastward
lay the lake, and over this the bitter
winds came raging. Sometimes the
thermometer would fall to ten or
twenty degrees below zero at night.
and in the morning the streets would