which the fertilizer was being ground--rushing
forth in a great brown river, with a spray of the finest dust flung
forth in clouds. Jurgis was given a shovel, and along with half a dozen
others it was his task to shovel this fertilizer into carts. That others
were at work he knew by the sound, and by the fact that he sometimes
collided with them; otherwise they might as well not have been there,
for in the blinding dust storm a man could not see six feet in front of
his face. When he had filled one cart he had to grope around him until
another came, and if there was none on hand he continued to grope till
one arrived. In five minutes he was, of course, a mass of fertilizer
from head to feet; they gave him a sponge to tie over his mouth, so that
he could breathe, but the sponge did not prevent his lips and eyelids
from caking up with it and his ears from filling solid. He looked like
a brown ghost at twilight--from hair to shoes he became the color of the
building and of everything in it, and for that matter a hundred yards
outside it. The building had to be left open, and when the wind blew
Durham and Company lost a great deal of fertilizer.

Working in his shirt sleeves, and with the thermometer at over a
hundred, the phosphates soaked in through every pore of Jurgis' skin,
and in five minutes he had a headache, and in fifteen was almost dazed.
The blood was pounding in his brain like an engine's throbbing; there
was a frightful pain in the top of his skull, and he could hardly
control his hands. Still, with the memory of his four months' siege
behind him, he fought on, in a frenzy of determination; and half an hour
later he began to vomit--he vomited until it seemed as if his inwards
must be torn into shreds. A man could get used to the fertilizer mill,
the boss had said, if he would make up his mind to it; but Jurgis now
began to see that it was a question of making up his stomach.

At the end of that day of horror, he could scarcely stand. He had to
catch himself now and then, and lean against a building and get his
bearings. Most of the men, when they came out, made straight for a
saloon--they seemed to place fertilizer and rattlesnake poison in one
class. But Jurgis was too ill to think of drinking--he could only make
his way to the street and stagger on to a car. He had a sense of humor,
and later on, when he became an old hand, he used to think it fun to
board a streetcar and see what happened. Now, however, he