r. The stench was almost overpowering, but to
Jurgis it was nothing. His whole soul was dancing with joy--he was at
work at last! He was at work and earning money! All day long he was
figuring to himself. He was paid the fabulous sum of seventeen and a
half cents an hour; and as it proved a rush day and he worked until
nearly seven o'clock in the evening, he went home to the family with
the tidings that he had earned more than a dollar and a half in a single
day!

At home, also, there was more good news; so much of it at once that
there was quite a celebration in Aniele's hall bedroom. Jonas had been
to have an interview with the special policeman to whom Szedvilas had
introduced him, and had been taken to see several of the bosses, with
the result that one had promised him a job the beginning of the next
week. And then there was Marija Berczynskas, who, fired with jealousy by
the success of Jurgis, had set out upon her own responsibility to get a
place. Marija had nothing to take with her save her two brawny arms
and the word "job," laboriously learned; but with these she had marched
about Packingtown all day, entering every door where there were signs of
activity. Out of some she had been ordered with curses; but Marija was
not afraid of man or devil, and asked every one she saw--visitors and
strangers, or work-people like herself, and once or twice even high and
lofty office personages, who stared at her as if they thought she was
crazy. In the end, however, she had reaped her reward. In one of the
smaller plants she had stumbled upon a room where scores of women and
girls were sitting at long tables preparing smoked beef in cans; and
wandering through room after room, Marija came at last to the place
where the sealed cans were being painted and labeled, and here she had
the good fortune to encounter the "forelady." Marija did not understand
then, as she was destined to understand later, what there was attractive
to a "forelady" about the combination of a face full of boundless good
nature and the muscles of a dray horse; but the woman had told her to
come the next day and she would perhaps give her a chance to learn the
trade of painting cans. The painting of cans being skilled piecework,
and paying as much as two dollars a day, Marija burst in upon the family
with the yell of a Comanche Indian, and fell to capering about the room
so as to frighten the baby almost into convulsions.

Better luck than all this could