e they would keep, strictly and to the letter--for two
years. Two years was the "statute of limitations," and after that the
victim could not sue.

What happened to a man after any of these things, all depended upon
the circumstances. If he were of the highly skilled workers, he would
probably have enough saved up to tide him over. The best paid men,
the "splitters," made fifty cents an hour, which would be five or six
dollars a day in the rush seasons, and one or two in the dullest. A
man could live and save on that; but then there were only half a dozen
splitters in each place, and one of them that Jurgis knew had a family
of twenty-two children, all hoping to grow up to be splitters like their
father. For an unskilled man, who made ten dollars a week in the rush
seasons and five in the dull, it all depended upon his age and the
number he had dependent upon him. An unmarried man could save, if he did
not drink, and if he was absolutely selfish--that is, if he paid no
heed to the demands of his old parents, or of his little brothers and
sisters, or of any other relatives he might have, as well as of the
members of his union, and his chums, and the people who might be
starving to death next door.

Chapter 13

During this time that Jurgis was looking for work occurred the death
of little Kristoforas, one of the children of Teta Elzbieta. Both
Kristoforas and his brother, Juozapas, were cripples, the latter having
lost one leg by having it run over, and Kristoforas having congenital
dislocation of the hip, which made it impossible for him ever to walk.
He was the last of Teta Elzbieta's children, and perhaps he had been
intended by nature to let her know that she had had enough. At any rate
he was wretchedly sick and undersized; he had the rickets, and though
he was over three years old, he was no bigger than an ordinary child
of one. All day long he would crawl around the floor in a filthy little
dress, whining and fretting; because the floor was full of drafts he was
always catching cold, and snuffling because his nose ran. This made
him a nuisance, and a source of endless trouble in the family. For his
mother, with unnatural perversity, loved him best of all her children,
and made a perpetual fuss over him--would let him do anything
undisturbed, and would burst into tears when his fretting drove Jurgis
wild.

And now he died. Perhaps it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that
morning--which may have been ma