t going well with them then,
and though it nearly broke Teta Elzbieta's heart, they were forced to
dispense with nearly all the decencies of a funeral; they had only a
hearse, and one hack for the women and children; and Jurgis, who was
learning things fast, spent all Sunday making a bargain for these, and
he made it in the presence of witnesses, so that when the man tried to
charge him for all sorts of incidentals, he did not have to pay. For
twenty-five years old Antanas Rudkus and his son had dwelt in the forest
together, and it was hard to part in this way; perhaps it was just as
well that Jurgis had to give all his attention to the task of having
a funeral without being bankrupted, and so had no time to indulge in
memories and grief.

Now the dreadful winter was come upon them. In the forests, all summer
long, the branches of the trees do battle for light, and some of them
lose and die; and then come the raging blasts, and the storms of snow
and hail, and strew the ground with these weaker branches. Just so it
was in Packingtown; the whole district braced itself for the struggle
that was an agony, and those whose time was come died off in hordes.
All the year round they had been serving as cogs in the great packing
machine; and now was the time for the renovating of it, and the
replacing of damaged parts. There came pneumonia and grippe, stalking
among them, seeking for weakened constitutions; there was the annual
harvest of those whom tuberculosis had been dragging down. There came
cruel, cold, and biting winds, and blizzards of snow, all testing
relentlessly for failing muscles and impoverished blood. Sooner or later
came the day when the unfit one did not report for work; and then, with
no time lost in waiting, and no inquiries or regrets, there was a chance
for a new hand.

The new hands were here by the thousands. All day long the gates of the
packing houses were besieged by starving and penniless men; they came,
literally, by the thousands every single morning, fighting with each
other for a chance for life. Blizzards and cold made no difference to
them, they were always on hand; they were on hand two hours before the
sun rose, an hour before the work began. Sometimes their faces
froze, sometimes their feet and their hands; sometimes they froze all
together--but still they came, for they had no other place to go. One
day Durham advertised in the paper for two hundred men to cut ice; and
all that day the h