ld go into convulsions. In the end it had to be arranged that
he always went with Jurgis, and came home with him again; and often,
when the snow was deep, the man would carry him the whole way on his
shoulders. Sometimes Jurgis would be working until late at night, and
then it was pitiful, for there was no place for the little fellow to
wait, save in the doorways or in a corner of the killing beds, and he
would all but fall asleep there, and freeze to death.

There was no heat upon the killing beds; the men might exactly as well
have worked out of doors all winter. For that matter, there was very
little heat anywhere in the building, except in the cooking rooms and
such places--and it was the men who worked in these who ran the most
risk of all, because whenever they had to pass to another room they had
to go through ice-cold corridors, and sometimes with nothing on above
the waist except a sleeveless undershirt. On the killing beds you were
apt to be covered with blood, and it would freeze solid; if you leaned
against a pillar, you would freeze to that, and if you put your hand
upon the blade of your knife, you would run a chance of leaving your
skin on it. The men would tie up their feet in newspapers and old sacks,
and these would be soaked in blood and frozen, and then soaked again,
and so on, until by nighttime a man would be walking on great lumps the
size of the feet of an elephant. Now and then, when the bosses were
not looking, you would see them plunging their feet and ankles into the
steaming hot carcass of the steer, or darting across the room to
the hot-water jets. The cruelest thing of all was that nearly all of
them--all of those who used knives--were unable to wear gloves, and
their arms would be white with frost and their hands would grow numb,
and then of course there would be accidents. Also the air would be full
of steam, from the hot water and the hot blood, so that you could not
see five feet before you; and then, with men rushing about at the speed
they kept up on the killing beds, and all with butcher knives, like
razors, in their hands--well, it was to be counted as a wonder that
there were not more men slaughtered than cattle.

And yet all this inconvenience they might have put up with, if only it
had not been for one thing--if only there had been some place where they
might eat. Jurgis had either to eat his dinner amid the stench in which
he had worked, or else to rush, as did all his companio