standing on the killing
bed till one o'clock, or perhaps even three or four o'clock, in the
afternoon. Like as not there would come a rush of cattle at the very
end of the day, which the men would have to dispose of before they went
home, often working by electric light till nine or ten, or even twelve
or one o'clock, and without a single instant for a bite of supper. The
men were at the mercy of the cattle. Perhaps the buyers would be holding
off for better prices--if they could scare the shippers into thinking
that they meant to buy nothing that day, they could get their own terms.
For some reason the cost of fodder for cattle in the yards was much
above the market price--and you were not allowed to bring your own
fodder! Then, too, a number of cars were apt to arrive late in the day,
now that the roads were blocked with snow, and the packers would buy
their cattle that night, to get them cheaper, and then would come into
play their ironclad rule, that all cattle must be killed the same day
they were bought. There was no use kicking about this--there had been
one delegation after another to see the packers about it, only to be
told that it was the rule, and that there was not the slightest chance
of its ever being altered. And so on Christmas Eve Jurgis worked till
nearly one o'clock in the morning, and on Christmas Day he was on the
killing bed at seven o'clock.

All this was bad; and yet it was not the worst. For after all the hard
work a man did, he was paid for only part of it. Jurgis had once been
among those who scoffed at the idea of these huge concerns cheating;
and so now he could appreciate the bitter irony of the fact that it was
precisely their size which enabled them to do it with impunity. One of
the rules on the killing beds was that a man who was one minute late
was docked an hour; and this was economical, for he was made to work the
balance of the hour--he was not allowed to stand round and wait. And on
the other hand if he came ahead of time he got no pay for that--though
often the bosses would start up the gang ten or fifteen minutes before
the whistle. And this same custom they carried over to the end of the
day; they did not pay for any fraction of an hour--for "broken time." A
man might work full fifty minutes, but if there was no work to fill out
the hour, there was no pay for him. Thus the end of every day was a
sort of lottery--a struggle, all but breaking into open war between
the bosses and