s, and
as the crops were ready they would follow north with the season, ending
with the fall in Manitoba. Then they would seek out the big lumber
camps, where there was winter work; or failing in this, would drift to
the cities, and live upon what they had managed to save, with the
help of such transient work as was there the loading and unloading of
steamships and drays, the digging of ditches and the shoveling of snow.
If there were more of them on hand than chanced to be needed, the weaker
ones died off of cold and hunger, again according to the stern system of
nature.

It was in the latter part of July, when Jurgis was in Missouri, that
he came upon the harvest work. Here were crops that men had worked for
three or four months to prepare, and of which they would lose nearly
all unless they could find others to help them for a week or two. So all
over the land there was a cry for labor--agencies were set up and all
the cities were drained of men, even college boys were brought by the
carload, and hordes of frantic farmers would hold up trains and carry
off wagon-loads of men by main force. Not that they did not pay them
well--any man could get two dollars a day and his board, and the best
men could get two dollars and a half or three.

The harvest-fever was in the very air, and no man with any spirit in
him could be in that region and not catch it. Jurgis joined a gang and
worked from dawn till dark, eighteen hours a day, for two weeks without
a break. Then he had a sum of money that would have been a fortune to
him in the old days of misery--but what could he do with it now? To be
sure he might have put it in a bank, and, if he were fortunate, get
it back again when he wanted it. But Jurgis was now a homeless man,
wandering over a continent; and what did he know about banking and
drafts and letters of credit? If he carried the money about with him, he
would surely be robbed in the end; and so what was there for him to do
but enjoy it while he could? On a Saturday night he drifted into a town
with his fellows; and because it was raining, and there was no other
place provided for him, he went to a saloon. And there were some who
treated him and whom he had to treat, and there was laughter and singing
and good cheer; and then out of the rear part of the saloon a girl's
face, red-cheeked and merry, smiled at Jurgis, and his heart thumped
suddenly in his throat. He nodded to her, and she came and sat by him,
and they h