ndless pressure of penury, would not know
what to make of these things, and could only try to recollect when
he had last been cross; and so Ona would have to forgive him and sob
herself to sleep.

The latter part of April Jurgis went to see the doctor, and was given a
bandage to lace about his ankle, and told that he might go back to work.
It needed more than the permission of the doctor, however, for when he
showed up on the killing floor of Brown's, he was told by the foreman
that it had not been possible to keep his job for him. Jurgis knew that
this meant simply that the foreman had found some one else to do the
work as well and did not want to bother to make a change. He stood in
the doorway, looking mournfully on, seeing his friends and companions at
work, and feeling like an outcast. Then he went out and took his place
with the mob of the unemployed.

This time, however, Jurgis did not have the same fine confidence, nor
the same reason for it. He was no longer the finest-looking man in the
throng, and the bosses no longer made for him; he was thin and haggard,
and his clothes were seedy, and he looked miserable. And there were
hundreds who looked and felt just like him, and who had been wandering
about Packingtown for months begging for work. This was a critical time
in Jurgis' life, and if he had been a weaker man he would have gone
the way the rest did. Those out-of-work wretches would stand about the
packing houses every morning till the police drove them away, and then
they would scatter among the saloons. Very few of them had the nerve
to face the rebuffs that they would encounter by trying to get into the
buildings to interview the bosses; if they did not get a chance in the
morning, there would be nothing to do but hang about the saloons the
rest of the day and night. Jurgis was saved from all this--partly, to
be sure, because it was pleasant weather, and there was no need to
be indoors; but mainly because he carried with him always the pitiful
little face of his wife. He must get work, he told himself, fighting
the battle with despair every hour of the day. He must get work! He must
have a place again and some money saved up, before the next winter came.

But there was no work for him. He sought out all the members of his
union--Jurgis had stuck to the union through all this--and begged them
to speak a word for him. He went to every one he knew, asking for a
chance, there or anywhere. He wandered all da