the men, the former trying to rush a job through and
the latter trying to stretch it out. Jurgis blamed the bosses for this,
though the truth to be told it was not always their fault; for the
packers kept them frightened for their lives--and when one was in danger
of falling behind the standard, what was easier than to catch up
by making the gang work awhile "for the church"? This was a savage
witticism the men had, which Jurgis had to have explained to him. Old
man Jones was great on missions and such things, and so whenever they
were doing some particularly disreputable job, the men would wink at
each other and say, "Now we're working for the church!"

One of the consequences of all these things was that Jurgis was no
longer perplexed when he heard men talk of fighting for their rights.
He felt like fighting now himself; and when the Irish delegate of the
butcher-helpers' union came to him a second time, he received him in a
far different spirit. A wonderful idea it now seemed to Jurgis, this
of the men--that by combining they might be able to make a stand and
conquer the packers! Jurgis wondered who had first thought of it; and
when he was told that it was a common thing for men to do in America, he
got the first inkling of a meaning in the phrase "a free country." The
delegate explained to him how it depended upon their being able to get
every man to join and stand by the organization, and so Jurgis signified
that he was willing to do his share. Before another month was by, all
the working members of his family had union cards, and wore their union
buttons conspicuously and with pride. For fully a week they were quite
blissfully happy, thinking that belonging to a union meant an end to all
their troubles.

But only ten days after she had joined, Marija's canning factory closed
down, and that blow quite staggered them. They could not understand why
the union had not prevented it, and the very first time she attended
a meeting Marija got up and made a speech about it. It was a business
meeting, and was transacted in English, but that made no difference to
Marija; she said what was in her, and all the pounding of the chairman's
gavel and all the uproar and confusion in the room could not prevail.
Quite apart from her own troubles she was boiling over with a general
sense of the injustice of it, and she told what she thought of the
packers, and what she thought of a world where such things were allowed
to happen; and