Before long Jurgis discovered what Scully had meant by something “turning up.” In May the agreement between the packers and the unions expired, and a new agreement had to be signed. Negotiations were going on, and the yards were full of talk of a strike. The old scale had dealt with the wages of the skilled men only; and of the members of the Meat Workers’ Union about two-thirds were unskilled men. In Chicago these latter were receiving, for the most part, eighteen and a half cents an hour, and the unions wished to make this the general wage for the next year. It was not nearly so large a wage as it seemed—in the course of the negotiations the union officers examined time-checks to the amount of ten thousand dollars, and they found that the highest wages paid had been fourteen dollars a week, the lowest two dollars and five cents, and the average of the whole, six dollars and sixty-five cents. And six dollars and sixty-five cents was hardly too much for a man to keep a family on. Considering the fact that the price of dressed meat had increased nearly fifty per cent in the last five years, while the price of “beef on the hoof” had decreased as much, it would have seemed that the packers ought to be able to pay it; but the packers were unwilling to pay it—they rejected the union demand, and to show what their purpose was, a week or two after the agreement expired they put down the wages of about a thousand men to sixteen and a half cents, and it was said that old man Jones had vowed he would put them to fifteen before he got through. There were a million and a half of men in the country looking for work, a hundred thousand of them right in Chicago; and were the packers to let the union stewards march into their places and bind them to a contract that would lose them several thousand dollars a day for a year? Not much!
All this was in June; and before long the question was submitted to a referendum in the unions, and the decision was for a strike. It was the same in all the packing-house cities; and suddenly the newspapers and public woke up to face the grewsome spectacle of a meat famine. All sorts of pleas for a reconsideration were made, but the packers were obdurate; and all the while they were reducing wages, and heading off shipments of cattle, and rushing in wagon-loads of mattresses and cots. So the men boiled over, and one night telegrams went out from the union headquarters to all the big packing centres,—to St. Paul, South Omaha, Sioux City, St. Joseph, Kansas City, East St. Louis, and New York,—and the next day at noon between fifty and sixty thousand men drew off their working clothes and marched out of the factories, and the great “Beef Strike” was on.
Jurgis went to his dinner, and afterward he walked over to see Mike Scully, who lived in a fine house, upon a street which had been decently paved and lighted for his especial benefit. Scully had gone into semi-retirement, and looked nervous and worried. “What do you want?” he demanded, when he saw Jurgis.
“I came to see if maybe you could get me a place during the strike,” the other replied.
And Scully knit his brows and eyed him narrowly. In that morning’s papers Jurgis had read a fierce denunciation of the packers by Scully, who had declared that if they did not treat their people better the city authorities would end the matter by tearing down their plants. Now, therefore, Jurgis was not a little taken aback when the other demanded suddenly, “See here, Rudkus, why don’t you stick by your job?”
Jurgis started. “Work as a scab?”
y
he cried.
“Why not?” demanded Scully. “What’s that to you?”
“But—but—” stammered Jurgis. He had somehow taken it for granted that he should go out with his union.
“The packers need good men, and need them bad,” continued the other, “and they’ll treat a man right that stands by them. Why don’t you take your chance and fix yourself?”
“But,” said Jurgis, “how could I ever be of any use to you—in politics?”
“You couldn’t be it anyhow,” said Scully, abruptly.
“Why not?” asked Jurgis.
“Hell, man!” cried the other. “Don’t you know you’re a Republican? And do you think I’m always going to elect Republicans? My brewer has found out already how we served him, and there is the deuce to pay.”
Jurgis looked dumfounded. He had never thought of that aspect of it before. “I could be a Democrat,” he said.
“Yes,” responded the other, “but not right away; a man can’t change his politics every day. And besides, I don’t need you—there’d be nothing for you to do. And it’s a long time to election day, anyhow; and what are you going to do meantime?”
“I thought I could count on you,” began Jurgis.
“Yes,” responded Scully, “so you could—I never yet went back on a friend. But is it fair to leave the job I got you and come to me for another? I have had a hundred fellows after me to-day, and what can I do? I’ve put seventeen men on the city pay-roll to clean streets this one week, and do you think I can keep that up forever? It wouldn’t do for me to tell other men what I tell you, but you’ve been on the inside, and you ought to have sense enough to see for yourself. What have you to gain by a strike?”
“I hadn’t thought,” said Jurgis.
“Exactly,” said Scully, “but you’d better. Take my word for it, the strike will be over in a few days, and the men will be beaten; and meantime what you get out of it will belong to you. Do you see?”
And Jurgis saw. He went back to the yards, and into the workroom. The men had left a long line of hogs in various stages of preparation, and the foreman was directing the feeble efforts of a score or two of clerks and stenographers and office-boys to finish up the job and get them into the chilling-rooms. Jurgis went straight up to him and announced, “I have come back to work, Mr. Murphy.”
The boss’s face lighted up. “Good man!” he cried. “Come ahead!”
“Just a moment,” said Jurgis, checking his enthusiasm. “I think I ought to get a little more wages.”
“Yes,” replied the other, “of course. What do you want?”
Jurgis had debated on the way. His nerve almost failed him now, but he clenched his hands. “I think I ought to have three dollars a day,” he said.
“All right,” said the other, promptly; and before the day was out our friend discovered that the clerks and stenographers and office-boys were getting five dollars a day, and then he could have kicked himself!
So Jurgis became one of the new “American heroes,” a man whose virtues merited comparison with those of the martyrs of Lexington and Valley Forge. The resemblance was not complete, of course, for Jurgis was generously paid and comfortably clad, and was provided with a spring-cot and a mattress and three substantial meals a day; also he was perfectly at ease, and safe from all peril of life and limb, save only in the case that a desire for beer should lead him to venture outside of the stockyards gates. And even in the exercise of this privilege he was not left unprotected; a good part of the inadequate police force of Chicago was suddenly diverted from its work of hunting criminals, and rushed out to serve him.
The police, and the strikers also, were determined that there should be no violence; but there was another party interested which was minded to the contrary—and that was the press. On the first day of his life as a strike-breaker Jurgis quit work early, and in a spirit of bravado he challenged three men of his acquaintance to go outside and get a drink. They accepted, and went through the big Halsted Street gate, where several policemen were watching, and also some union pickets, scanning sharply those who passed in and out. Jurgis and his companions went south on Halsted Street, past the hotel, and then suddenly half a dozen men started across the street toward them and proceeded to argue with them concerning the error of their ways. As the arguments were not taken in the proper spirit, they went on to threats; and suddenly one of them jerked off the hat of one of the four and flung it over the fence. The man started after it, and then, as a cry of “Scab!” was raised and a dozen people came running out of saloons and doorways, a second man’s heart failed him and he followed. Jurgis and the fourth stayed long enough to give themselves the satisfaction of a quick exchange of blows, and then they, too, took to their heels and fled back of the hotel and into the yards again. Meantime, of course, policemen were coming on a run, and as a crowd gathered other police got excited and sent in a riot-call. Jurgis knew nothing of this, but went back to “Packers’ Avenue,” and in front of the “Central Time-Station” he saw one of his companions, breathless and wild with excitement, narrating to an ever growing throng how the four had been attacked and surrounded by a howling mob, and had been nearly torn to pieces. While he stood listening, smiling cynically, several dapper young men stood by with note-books in their hands, and it was not more than two hours later that Jurgis saw newsboys running about with armfuls of newspapers, printed in red and black letters six inches high:—
VIOLENCE IN THE YARDS! STRIKE-BREAKERS
SURROUNDED BY FRENZIED MOB!
If he had been able to buy all of the newspapers of the United States the next morning, he might have discovered that his beer-hunting exploit was being perused by some two score millions of people, and had served as a text for editorials in half the staid and solemn business men’s newspapers in the land.
Jurgis was to see more of this as time passed. For the present, his work being over, he was free to ride into the city, by a railroad direct from the yards, or else to spend the night in a room where cots had been laid in rows. He chose the latter, but to his regret, for all night long gangs of strike-breakers kept arriving. As very few of the better class of working-men could be got for such work, these specimens of the new American hero contained an assortment of the criminals and thugs of the city, besides negroes and the lowest foreigners—Greeks, Roumanians, Sicilians, and Slovaks. They had been attracted more by the prospect of disorder than by the big wages; and they made the night hideous with singing and carousing, and only went to sleep when the time came for them to get up to work.
In the morning before Jurgis had finished his breakfast, “Pat” Murphy ordered him to one of the superintendents, who questioned him as to his experience in the work of the killing-room. His heart began to thump with excitement, for he divined instantly that his hour had come—that he was to be a boss!
Some of the foremen were union members, and many who were not had gone out with the men. It was in the killing department that the packers had been left most in the lurch, and precisely here that they could least afford it; the smoking and canning and salting of meat might wait, and all the by-products might be wasted—but fresh meats must be had, or the restaurants and hotels and brown-stone houses would feel the pinch, and then “public opinion” would take a startling turn.
An opportunity such as this would not come twice to a man; and Jurgis seized it. Yes, he knew the work, the whole of it, and he could teach it to others. But if he took the job and gave satisfaction he would expect to keep it—they would not turn him off at the end of the strike? To which the superintendent replied that he might safely trust Durham’s for that—they proposed to teach these unions a lesson, and most of all those foremen who had gone back on them. Jurgis would receive five dollars a 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 marvellous 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 refusing 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.
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 rendered 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 earning 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 custom spread, and Jurgis was soon making quite a good income from it.