ates
the next morning, he might have discovered that his beer-hunting exploit
was being perused by some two score millions of people, and had served
as a text for editorials in half the staid and solemn business-men's
newspapers in the land.

Jurgis was to see more of this as time passed. For the present, his work
being over, he was free to ride into the city, by a railroad direct from
the yards, or else to spend the night in a room where cots had been
laid in rows. He chose the latter, but to his regret, for all night long
gangs of strikebreakers kept arriving. As very few of the better class
of workingmen could be got for such work, these specimens of the new
American hero contained an assortment of the criminals and thugs of
the city, besides Negroes and the lowest foreigners--Greeks, Roumanians,
Sicilians, and Slovaks. They had been attracted more by the prospect of
disorder than by the big wages; and they made the night hideous with
singing and carousing, and only went to sleep when the time came for
them to get up to work.

In the morning before Jurgis had finished his breakfast, "Pat" Murphy
ordered him to one of the superintendents, who questioned him as to his
experience in the work of the killing room. His heart began to thump
with excitement, for he divined instantly that his hour had come--that
he was to be a boss!

Some of the foremen were union members, and many who were not had gone
out with the men. It was in the killing department that the packers had
been left most in the lurch, and precisely here that they could least
afford it; the smoking and canning and salting of meat might wait, and
all the by-products might be wasted--but fresh meats must be had, or the
restaurants and hotels and brownstone houses would feel the pinch, and
then "public opinion" would take a startling turn.

An opportunity such as this would not come twice to a man; and Jurgis
seized it. Yes, he knew the work, the whole of it, and he could teach it
to others. But if he took the job and gave satisfaction he would expect
to keep it--they would not turn him off at the end of the strike? To
which the superintendent replied that he might safely trust Durham's
for that--they proposed to teach these unions a lesson, and most of
all those foremen who had gone back on them. Jurgis would receive five
dollars a day during the strike, and twenty-five a week after it was
settled.

So our friend got a pair of "slaughter pen" boots and "j