eans," and flung
himself at his task. It was a weird sight, there on the killing beds--a
throng of stupid black Negroes, and foreigners who could not understand
a word that was said to them, mixed with pale-faced, hollow-chested
bookkeepers and clerks, half-fainting for the tropical heat and the
sickening stench of fresh blood--and all struggling to dress a dozen
or two cattle in the same place where, twenty-four hours ago, the old
killing gang had been speeding, with their marvelous precision, turning
out four hundred carcasses every hour!

The Negroes and the "toughs" from the Levee did not want to work,
and every few minutes some of them would feel obliged to retire and
recuperate. In a couple of days Durham and Company had electric fans up
to cool off the rooms for them, and even couches for them to rest
on; and meantime they could go out and find a shady corner and take a
"snooze," and as there was no place for any one in particular, and no
system, it might be hours before their boss discovered them. As for
the poor office employees, they did their best, moved to it by terror;
thirty of them had been "fired" in a bunch that first morning for
refusing to serve, besides a number of women clerks and typewriters who
had declined to act as waitresses.

It was such a force as this that Jurgis had to organize. He did his
best, flying here and there, placing them in rows and showing them the
tricks; he had never given an order in his life before, but he had taken
enough of them to know, and he soon fell into the spirit of it, and
roared and stormed like any old stager. He had not the most tractable
pupils, however. "See hyar, boss," a big black "buck" would begin, "ef
you doan' like de way Ah does dis job, you kin get somebody else to do
it." Then a crowd would gather and listen, muttering threats. After the
first meal nearly all the steel knives had been missing, and now every
Negro had one, ground to a fine point, hidden in his boots.

There was no bringing order out of such a chaos, Jurgis soon discovered;
and he fell in with the spirit of the thing--there was no reason why he
should wear himself out with shouting. If hides and guts were slashed
and rendered useless there was no way of tracing it to any one; and if
a man lay off and forgot to come back there was nothing to be gained
by seeking him, for all the rest would quit in the meantime. Everything
went, during the strike, and the packers paid. Before long Jurgis