go, and the men were for the most part
ignorant country Negroes, the nameless diseases of vice were soon rife;
and this where food was being handled which was sent out to every corner
of the civilized world.

The "Union Stockyards" were never a pleasant place; but now they were
not only a collection of slaughterhouses, but also the camping place
of an army of fifteen or twenty thousand human beasts. All day long the
blazing midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations:
upon tens of thousands of cattle crowded into pens whose wooden floors
stank and steamed contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn
railroad tracks, and huge blocks of dingy meat factories, whose
labyrinthine passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate them;
and there were not merely rivers of hot blood, and car-loads of
moist flesh, and rendering vats and soap caldrons, glue factories and
fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell--there were also
tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy laundry of the
workers hung out to dry, and dining rooms littered with food and black
with flies, and toilet rooms that were open sewers.

And then at night, when this throng poured out into the streets to
play--fighting, gambling, drinking and carousing, cursing and screaming,
laughing and singing, playing banjoes and dancing! They were worked
in the yards all the seven days of the week, and they had their prize
fights and crap games on Sunday nights as well; but then around the
corner one might see a bonfire blazing, and an old, gray-headed Negress,
lean and witchlike, her hair flying wild and her eyes blazing, yelling
and chanting of the fires of perdition and the blood of the "Lamb,"
while men and women lay down upon the ground and moaned and screamed in
convulsions of terror and remorse.

Such were the stockyards during the strike; while the unions watched
in sullen despair, and the country clamored like a greedy child for its
food, and the packers went grimly on their way. Each day they added new
workers, and could be more stern with the old ones--could put them on
piecework, and dismiss them if they did not keep up the pace. Jurgis was
now one of their agents in this process; and he could feel the change
day by day, like the slow starting up of a huge machine. He had gotten
used to being a master of men; and because of the stifling heat and
the stench, and the fact that he was a "scab" and knew it and despised