her job. She had taken the place of an Irishwoman who had
been working in that factory ever since any one could remember. For over
fifteen years, so she declared. Mary Dennis was her name, and a long
time ago she had been seduced, and had a little boy; he was a cripple,
and an epileptic, but still he was all that she had in the world to
love, and they had lived in a little room alone somewhere back of
Halsted Street, where the Irish were. Mary had had consumption, and all
day long you might hear her coughing as she worked; of late she had been
going all to pieces, and when Marija came, the "forelady" had suddenly
decided to turn her off. The forelady had to come up to a certain
standard herself, and could not stop for sick people, Jadvyga explained.
The fact that Mary had been there so long had not made any difference
to her--it was doubtful if she even knew that, for both the forelady and
the superintendent were new people, having only been there two or three
years themselves. Jadvyga did not know what had become of the poor
creature; she would have gone to see her, but had been sick herself. She
had pains in her back all the time, Jadvyga explained, and feared
that she had womb trouble. It was not fit work for a woman, handling
fourteen-pound cans all day.

It was a striking circumstance that Jonas, too, had gotten his job by
the misfortune of some other person. Jonas pushed a truck loaded with
hams from the smoke rooms on to an elevator, and thence to the packing
rooms. The trucks were all of iron, and heavy, and they put about
threescore hams on each of them, a load of more than a quarter of a
ton. On the uneven floor it was a task for a man to start one of these
trucks, unless he was a giant; and when it was once started he naturally
tried his best to keep it going. There was always the boss prowling
about, and if there was a second's delay he would fall to cursing;
Lithuanians and Slovaks and such, who could not understand what was said
to them, the bosses were wont to kick about the place like so many
dogs. Therefore these trucks went for the most part on the run; and the
predecessor of Jonas had been jammed against the wall by one and crushed
in a horrible and nameless manner.

All of these were sinister incidents; but they were trifles compared to
what Jurgis saw with his own eyes before long. One curious thing he
had noticed, the very first day, in his profession of shoveler of guts;
which was the sharp tric