CHAPTER 29

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The man had gone back to a seat upon the platform, and Jurgis

realized that his speech was over. The applause continued for

several minutes; and then some one started a song, and the crowd

took it up, and the place shook with it. Jurgis had never heard

it, and he could not make out the words, but the wild and

wonderful spirit of it seized upon him--it was the

"Marseillaise!" As stanza after stanza of it thundered forth, he

sat with his hands clasped, trembling in every nerve. He had

never been so stirred in his life--it was a miracle that had been

wrought in him. He could not think at all, he was stunned; yet

he knew that in the mighty upheaval that had taken place in his

soul, a new man had been born. He had been torn out of the jaws

of destruction, he had been delivered from the thraldom of

despair; the whole world had been changed for him--he was free,

he was free! Even if he were to suffer as he had before, even if

he were to beg and starve, nothing would be the same to him; he

would understand it, and bear it. He would no longer be the

sport of circumstances, he would be a man, with a will and a

purpose; he would have something to fight for, something to die

for, if need be! Here were men who would show him and help him;

and he would have friends and allies, he would dwell in the sight

of justice, and walk arm in arm with power.

The audience subsided again, and Jurgis sat back. The chairman

of the meeting came forward and began to speak. His voice

sounded thin and futile after the other's, and to Jurgis it

seemed a profanation. Why should any one else speak, after that

miraculous man--why should they not all sit in silence? The

chairman was explaining that a collection would now be taken up

to defray the expenses of the meeting, and for the benefit of the

campaign fund of the party. Jurgis heard; but he had not a penny

to give, and so his thoughts went elsewhere again.

He kept his eyes fixed on the orator, who sat in an armchair, his

head leaning on his hand and his attitude indicating exhaustion.

But suddenly he stood up again, and Jurgis heard the chairman of

the meeting saying that the speaker would now answer any

questions which the audience might care to put to him. The man

came forward, and some one--a woman--arose and asked about some

opinion the speaker had expressed concerning Tolstoy. Jurgis had

never heard of Tolstoy, and did not care anything about him. Why

should any one want to ask such questions, after an address like

that? The thing was not to talk, but to do; the thing was to get

bold of others and rouse them, to organize them and prepare for

the fight! But still the discussion went on, in ordinary

conversational tones, and it brought Jurgis back to the everyday

world. A few minutes ago he had felt like seizing the hand of

the beautiful lady by his side, and kissing it; he had felt like

flinging his arms about the neck of the man on the other side of

him. And now he began to realize again that he was a "hobo,"

that he was ragged and dirty, and smelled bad, and had no place

to sleep that night!

And so, at last, when the meeting broke up, and the audience

started to leave, poor Jurgis was in an agony of uncertainty.

He had not thought of leaving--he had thought that the vision must

last forever, that he had found comrades and brothers. But now

he would go out, and the thing would fade away, and he would

never be able to find it again! He sat in his seat, frightened

and wondering; but others in the same row wanted to get out, and

so he had to stand up and move along. As he was swept down the

aisle he looked from one person to another, wistfully; they were

all excitedly discussing the address--but there was nobody who

offered to discuss it with him. He was near enough to the door

to feel the night air, when desperation seized him. He knew

nothing at all about that speech he had heard, not even the name

of the orator; and he was to go away--no, no, it was

preposterous, he must speak to some one; he must find that man

himself and tell him. He would not despise him, tramp as he was!

So he stepped into an empty row of seats and watched, and when

the crowd had thinned out, he started toward the platform. The

speaker was gone; but there was a stage door that stood open,

with people passing in and out, and no one on guard. Jurgis

summoned up his courage and went in, and down a hallway, and to

the door of a room where many people were crowded. No one paid

any attention to him, and he pushed in, and in a corner he saw

the man he sought. The orator sat in a chair, with his shoulders

sunk together and his eyes half closed; his face was ghastly

pale, almost greenish in hue, and one arm lay limp at his side.

A big man with spectacles on stood near him, and kept pushing

back the crowd, saying, "Stand away a little, please; can't you

see the comrade is worn out?"

So Jurgis stood watching, while five or ten minutes passed. Now

and then the man would look up, and address a word or two to

those who were near him; and, at last, on one of these occasions,

his glance rested on Jurgis. There seemed to be a slight hint of

inquiry about it, and a sudden impulse seized the other. He

stepped forward.

"I wanted to thank you, sir!" he began, in breathless haste. "I

could not go away without telling you how much--how glad I am I

heard you. I--I didn't know anything about it all--"

The big man with the spectacles, who had moved away, came back at

this moment. "The comrade is too tired to talk to any one--" he

began; but the other held up his hand.

"Wait," he said. "He has something to say to me." And then he

looked into Jurgis's face. "You want to know more about

Socialism?" he asked.

Jurgis started. "I--I--" he stammered. "Is it Socialism? I

didn't know. I want to know about what you spoke of--I want to

help. I have been through all that."

"Where do you live?" asked the other.

"I have no home," said Jurgis, "I am out of work."

"You are a foreigner, are you not?"

"Lithuanian, sir."

The man thought for a moment, and then turned to his friend.

"Who is there, Walters?" he asked. "There is Ostrinski--but he

is a Pole--"

"Ostrinski speaks Lithuanian," said the other. "All right, then;

would you mind seeing if he has gone yet?"

The other started away, and the speaker looked at Jurgis again.

He had deep, black eyes, and a face full of gentleness and pain.

"You must excuse me, comrade," he said. "I am just tired out--I

have spoken every day for the last month. I will introduce you

to some one who will be able to help you as well as I could--"

The messenger had had to go no further than the door, he came

back, followed by a man whom he introduced to Jurgis as "Comrade

Ostrinski." Comrade Ostrinski was a little man, scarcely up to

Jurgis's shoulder, wizened and wrinkled, very ugly, and slightly

lame. He had on a long-tailed black coat, worn green at the

seams and the buttonholes; his eyes must have been weak, for he

wore green spectacles that gave him a grotesque appearance.

But his handclasp was hearty, and he spoke in Lithuanian, which

warmed Jurgis to him.

"You want to know about Socialism?" he said. "Surely. Let us go

out and take a stroll, where we can be quiet and talk some."

And so Jurgis bade farewell to the master wizard, and went out.

Ostrinski asked where he lived, offering to walk in that

direction; and so he had to explain once more that he was without

a home. At the other's request he told his story; how he had

come to America, and what had happened to him in the stockyards,

and how his family had been broken up, and how he had become a

wanderer. So much the little man heard, and then he pressed

Jurgis's arm tightly. "You have been through the mill, comrade!"

he said. "We will make a fighter out of you!"

Then Ostrinski in turn explained his circumstances. He would

have asked Jurgis to his home--but he had only two rooms, and had

no bed to offer. He would have given up his own bed, but his

wife was ill. Later on, when he understood that otherwise Jurgis

would have to sleep in a hallway, he offered him his kitchen

floor, a chance which the other was only too glad to accept.

"Perhaps tomorrow we can do better," said Ostrinski. "We try not

to let a comrade starve."

Ostrinski's home was in the Ghetto district, where he had two

rooms in the basement of a tenement. There was a baby crying as

they entered, and he closed the door leading into the bedroom.

He had three young children, he explained, and a baby had just

come. He drew up two chairs near the kitchen stove, adding that

Jurgis must excuse the disorder of the place, since at such a

time one's domestic arrangements were upset. Half of the kitchen

was given up to a workbench, which was piled with clothing, and

Ostrinski explained that he was a "pants finisher." He brought

great bundles of clothing here to his home, where he and his wife

worked on them. He made a living at it, but it was getting

harder all the time, because his eyes were failing. What would

come when they gave out he could not tell; there had been no

saving anything--a man could barely keep alive by twelve or

fourteen hours' work a day. The finishing of pants did not take

much skill, and anybody could learn it, and so the pay was

forever getting less. That was the competitive wage system; and

if Jurgis wanted to understand what Socialism was, it was there

he had best begin. The workers were dependent upon a job to

exist from day to day, and so they bid against each other, and no

man could get more than the lowest man would consent to work for.

And thus the mass of the people were always in a life-and-death

struggle with poverty. That was "competition," so far as it

concerned the wage-earner, the man who had only his labor to

sell; to those on top, the exploiters, it appeared very

differently, of course--there were few of them, and they could

combine and dominate, and their power would be unbreakable. And

so all over the world two classes were forming, with an unbridged

chasm between them--the capitalist class, with its enormous

fortunes, and the proletariat, bound into slavery by unseen

chains. The latter were a thousand to one in numbers, but they

were ignorant and helpless, and they would remain at the mercy of

their exploiters until they were organized--until they had become

"class-conscious." It was a slow and weary process, but it would

go on--it was like the movement of a glacier, once it was started

it could never be stopped. Every Socialist did his share, and

lived upon the vision of the "good time coming,"--when the

working class should go to the polls and seize the powers of

government, and put an end to private property in the means of

production. No matter how poor a man was, or how much he

suffered, he could never be really unhappy while he knew of that

future; even if he did not live to see it himself, his children

would, and, to a Socialist, the victory of his class was his

victory. Also he had always the progress to encourage him;

here in Chicago, for instance, the movement was growing by leaps and

bounds. Chicago was the industrial center of the country, and

nowhere else were the unions so strong; but their organizations

did the workers little good, for the employers were organized,

also; and so the strikes generally failed, and as fast as the

unions were broken up the men were coming over to the Socialists.

Ostrinski explained the organization of the party, the machinery

by which the proletariat was educating itself. There were

"locals" in every big city and town, and they were being

organized rapidly in the smaller places; a local had anywhere

from six to a thousand members, and there were fourteen hundred

of them in all, with a total of about twenty-five thousand

members, who paid dues to support the organization. "Local Cook

County," as the city organization was called, had eighty branch

locals, and it alone was spending several thousand dollars in the

campaign. It published a weekly in English, and one each in

Bohemian and German; also there was a monthly published in

Chicago, and a cooperative publishing house, that issued a

million and a half of Socialist books and pamphlets every year.

All this was the growth of the last few years--there had been

almost nothing of it when Ostrinski first came to Chicago.

Ostrinski was a Pole, about fifty years of age. He had lived in

Silesia, a member of a despised and persecuted race, and had

taken part in the proletarian movement in the early seventies,

when Bismarck, having conquered France, had turned his policy of

blood and iron upon the "International." Ostrinski himself had

twice been in jail, but he had been young then, and had not

cared. He had had more of his share of the fight, though, for

just when Socialism had broken all its barriers and become the

great political force of the empire, he had come to America, and

begun all over again. In America every one had laughed at the

mere idea of Socialism then--in America all men were free. As if

political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable! said

Ostrinski.

The little tailor sat tilted back in his stiff kitchen chair,

with his feet stretched out upon the empty stove, and speaking in

low whispers, so as not to waken those in the next room. To

Jurgis he seemed a scarcely less wonderful person than the

speaker at the meeting; he was poor, the lowest of the low,

hunger-driven and miserable--and yet how much he knew, how much

he had dared and achieved, what a hero he had been! There were

others like him, too--thousands like him, and all of them

workingmen! That all this wonderful machinery of progress had

been created by his fellows--Jurgis could not believe it, it

seemed too good to be true.

That was always the way, said Ostrinski; when a man was first

converted to Socialism he was like a crazy person--he could not'

understand how others could fail to see it, and he expected to

convert all the world the first week. After a while he would

realize how hard a task it was; and then it would be fortunate

that other new hands kept coming, to save him from settling down

into a rut. Just now Jurgis would have plenty of chance to vent

his excitement, for a presidential campaign was on, and everybody

was talking politics. Ostrinski would take him to the next

meeting of the branch local, and introduce him, and he might join

the party. The dues were five cents a week, but any one who

could not afford this might be excused from paying. The

Socialist party was a really democratic political

organization--it was controlled absolutely by its own membership,

and had no bosses. All of these things Ostrinski explained, as

also the principles of the party. You might say that there was

really but one Socialist principle--that of "no compromise,"

which was the essence of the proletarian movement all over the

world. When a Socialist was elected to office he voted with old

party legislators for any measure that was likely to be of help

to the working class, but he never forgot that these concessions,

whatever they might be, were trifles compared with the great

purpose--the organizing of the working class for the revolution.

So far, the rule in America had been that one Socialist made

another Socialist once every two years; and if they should

maintain the same rate they would carry the country in

1912--though not all of them expected to succeed as quickly as

that.

The Socialists were organized in every civilized nation; it was

an international political party, said Ostrinski, the greatest

the world had ever known. It numbered thirty million of

adherents, and it cast eight million votes. It had started its

first newspaper in Japan, and elected its first deputy in

Argentina; in France it named members of cabinets, and in Italy

and Australia it held the balance of power and turned out

ministries. In Germany, where its vote was more than a third of

the total vote of the empire, all other parties and powers had

united to fight it. It would not do, Ostrinski explained,

for the proletariat of one nation to achieve the victory, for that

nation would be crushed by the military power of the others;

and so the Socialist movement was a world movement, an organization

of all mankind to establish liberty and fraternity. It was the

new religion of humanity--or you might say it was the fulfillment

of the old religion, since it implied but the literal application

of all the teachings of Christ.

Until long after midnight Jurgis sat lost in the conversation of

his new acquaintance. It was a most wonderful experience to

him--an almost supernatural experience. It was like encountering

an inhabitant of the fourth dimension of space, a being who was

free from all one's own limitations. For four years, now, Jurgis

had been wondering and blundering in the depths of a wilderness;

and here, suddenly, a hand reached down and seized him, and

lifted him out of it, and set him upon a mountain-top, from which

he could survey it all--could see the paths from which he had

wandered, the morasses into which he had stumbled, the hiding

places of the beasts of prey that had fallen upon him. There

were his Packingtown experiences, for instance--what was there

about Packingtown that Ostrinski could not explain! To Jurgis

the packers had been equivalent to fate; Ostrinski showed him

that they were the Beef Trust. They were a gigantic combination

of capital, which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the

laws of the land, and was preying upon the people. Jurgis

recollected how, when he had first come to Packingtown, he had

stood and watched the hog-killing, and thought how cruel and

savage it was, and come away congratulating himself that he was

not a hog; now his new acquaintance showed him that a hog was

just what he had been--one of the packers' hogs. What they

wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of

him; and that was what they wanted from the workingman, and also

that was what they wanted from the public. What the hog thought

of it, and what he suffered, were not considered; and no more was

it with labor, and no more with the purchaser of meat. That was

true everywhere in the world, but it was especially true in

Packingtown; there seemed to be something about the work of

slaughtering that tended to ruthlessness and ferocity--it was

literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a hundred

human lives did not balance a penny of profit. When Jurgis had

made himself familiar with the Socialist literature, as he would

very quickly, he would get glimpses of the Beef Trust from all

sorts of aspects, and he would find it everywhere the same;

it was the incarnation of blind and insensate Greed. It was a

monster devouring with a thousand mouths, trampling with a

thousand hoofs; it was the Great Butcher--it was the spirit of

Capitalism made flesh. Upon the ocean of commerce it sailed as a

pirate ship; it had hoisted the black flag and declared war upon

civilization. Bribery and corruption were its everyday methods.

In Chicago the city government was simply one of its branch

offices; it stole billions of gallons of city water openly, it

dictated to the courts the sentences of disorderly strikers, it

forbade the mayor to enforce the building laws against it. In

the national capital it had power to prevent inspection of its

product, and to falsify government reports; it violated the

rebate laws, and when an investigation was threatened it burned

its books and sent its criminal agents out of the country.

In the commercial world it was a Juggernaut car; it wiped out

thousands of businesses every year, it drove men to madness and

suicide. It had forced the price of cattle so low as to destroy

the stock-raising industry, an occupation upon which whole states

existed; it had ruined thousands of butchers who had refused to

handle its products. It divided the country into districts, and

fixed the price of meat in all of them; and it owned all the

refrigerator cars, and levied an enormous tribute upon all

poultry and eggs and fruit and vegetables. With the millions of

dollars a week that poured in upon it, it was reaching out for

the control of other interests, railroads and trolley lines, gas

and electric light franchises--it already owned the leather and

the grain business of the country. The people were tremendously

stirred up over its encroachments, but nobody had any remedy to

suggest; it was the task of Socialists to teach and organize

them, and prepare them for the time when they were to seize the

huge machine called the Beef Trust, and use it to produce food

for human beings and not to heap up fortunes for a band of

pirates. It was long after midnight when Jurgis lay down upon

the floor of Ostrinski's kitchen; and yet it was an hour before

he could get to sleep, for the glory of that joyful vision of the

people of Packingtown marching in and taking possession of the

Union Stockyards!

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