And now he died. Perhaps it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that morning—which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork that was condemned9 as unfit for export. At any rate, an hour after eating it, the child had begun to cry with pain, and in another hour he was rolling about on the floor in convulsions. Little Kotrina, who was all alone with him, ran out screaming for help, and after a while a doctor came, but not until Kristoforas had howled his last howl. No one was really sorry about this except poor Elzbieta, who was inconsolable. Jurgis announced that so far as he was concerned the child would have to be buried by the city, since they had no money for a funeral; and at this the poor woman almost went out of her senses, wringing10 her hands and screaming with grief and despair. Her child to be buried in a pauper's grave! And her stepdaughter to stand by and hear it said without protesting! It was enough to make Ona's father rise up out of his grave to rebuke11 her! If it had come to this, they might as well give up at once, and be buried all of them together! . . . In the end Marija said that she would help with ten dollars; and Jurgis being still obdurate12, Elzbieta went in tears and begged the money from the neighbors, and so little Kristoforas had a mass and a hearse with white plumes13 on it, and a tiny plot in a graveyard14 with a wooden cross to mark the place. The poor mother was not the same for months after that; the mere15 sight of the floor where little Kristoforas had crawled about would make her weep. He had never had a fair chance, poor little fellow, she would say. He had been handicapped from his birth. If only she had heard about it in time, so that she might have had that great doctor to cure him of his lameness16! . . . Some time ago, Elzbieta was told, a Chicago billionaire had paid a fortune to bring a great European surgeon over to cure his little daughter of the same disease from which Kristoforas had suffered. And because this surgeon had to have bodies to demonstrate upon, he announced that he would treat the children of the poor, a piece of magnanimity over which the papers became quite eloquent17. Elzbieta, alas18, did not read the papers, and no one had told her; but perhaps it was as well, for just then they would not have had the carfare to spare to go every day to wait upon the surgeon, nor for that matter anybody with the time to take the child.
All this while that he was seeking for work, there was a dark shadow hanging over Jurgis; as if a savage19 beast were lurking20 somewhere in the pathway of his life, and he knew it, and yet could not help approaching the place. There are all stages of being out of work in Packingtown, and he faced in dread21 the prospect22 of reaching the lowest. There is a place that waits for the lowest man—the fertilizer plant!
The men would talk about it in awe-stricken whispers. Not more than one in ten had ever really tried it; the other nine had contented23 themselves with hearsay24 evidence and a peep through the door. There were some things worse than even starving to death. They would ask Jurgis if he had worked there yet, and if he meant to; and Jurgis would debate the matter with himself. As poor as they were, and making all the sacrifices that they were, would he dare to refuse any sort of work that was offered to him, be it as horrible as ever it could? Would he dare to go home and eat bread that had been earned by Ona, weak and complaining as she was, knowing that he had been given a chance, and had not had the nerve to take it?—And yet he might argue that way with himself all day, and one glimpse into the fertilizer works would send him away again shuddering25. He was a man, and he would do his duty; he went and made application—but surely he was not also required to hope for success!
The fertilizer works of Durham's lay away from the rest of the plant. Few visitors ever saw them, and the few who did would come out looking like Dante, of whom the peasants declared that he had been into hell. To this part of the yards came all the "tankage" and the waste products of all sorts; here they dried out the bones,—and in suffocating26 cellars where the daylight never came you might see men and women and children bending over whirling machines and sawing bits of bone into all sorts of shapes, breathing their lungs full of the fine dust, and doomed27 to die, every one of them, within a certain definite time. Here they made the blood into albumen, and made other foul-smelling things into things still more foul-smelling. In the corridors and caverns28 where it was done you might lose yourself as in the great caves of Kentucky. In the dust and the steam the electric lights would shine like far-off twinkling stars—red and blue-green and purple stars, according to the color of the mist and the brew29 from which it came. For the odors of these ghastly charnel houses there may be words in Lithuanian, but there are none in English. The person entering would have to summon his courage as for a cold-water plunge30. He would go in like a man swimming under water; he would put his handkerchief over his face, and begin to cough and choke; and then, if he were still obstinate31, he would find his head beginning to ring, and the veins32 in his forehead to throb33, until finally he would be assailed34 by an overpowering blast of ammonia fumes35, and would turn and run for his life, and come out half-dazed.
On top of this were the rooms where they dried the "tankage," the mass of brown stringy stuff that was left after the waste portions of the carcasses had had the lard and tallow dried out of them. This dried material they would then grind to a fine powder, and after they had mixed it up well with a mysterious but inoffensive brown rock which they brought in and ground up by the hundreds of carloads for that purpose, the substance was ready to be put into bags and sent out to the world as any one of a hundred different brands of standard bone phosphate. And then the farmer in Maine or California or Texas would buy this, at say twenty-five dollars a ton, and plant it with his corn; and for several days after the operation the fields would have a strong odor, and the farmer and his wagon36 and the very horses that had hauled it would all have it too. In Packingtown the fertilizer is pure, instead of being a flavoring, and instead of a ton or so spread out on several acres under the open sky, there are hundreds and thousands of tons of it in one building, heaped here and there in haystack piles, covering the floor several inches deep, and filling the air with a choking dust that becomes a blinding sandstorm when the wind stirs.
It was to this building that Jurgis came daily, as if dragged by an unseen hand. The month of May was an exceptionally cool one, and his secret prayers were granted; but early in June there came a record-breaking hot spell, and after that there were men wanted in the fertilizer mill.
The boss of the grinding room had come to know Jurgis by this time, and had marked him for a likely man; and so when he came to the door about two o'clock this breathless hot day, he felt a sudden spasm37 of pain shoot through him—the boss beckoned38 to him! In ten minutes more Jurgis had pulled off his coat and overshirt, and set his teeth together and gone to work. Here was one more difficulty for him to meet and conquer!
His labor39 took him about one minute to learn. Before him was one of the vents40 of the mill in which the fertilizer was being ground—rushing forth41 in a great brown river, with a spray of the finest dust flung forth in clouds. Jurgis was given a shovel42, and along with half a dozen others it was his task to shovel this fertilizer into carts. That others were at work he knew by the sound, and by the fact that he sometimes collided with them; otherwise they might as well not have been there, for in the blinding dust storm a man could not see six feet in front of his face. When he had filled one cart he had to grope around him until another came, and if there was none on hand he continued to grope till one arrived. In five minutes he was, of course, a mass of fertilizer from head to feet; they gave him a sponge to tie over his mouth, so that he could breathe, but the sponge did not prevent his lips and eyelids43 from caking up with it and his ears from filling solid. He looked like a brown ghost at twilight—from hair to shoes he became the color of the building and of everything in it, and for that matter a hundred yards outside it. The building had to be left open, and when the wind blew Durham and Company lost a great deal of fertilizer.
Working in his shirt sleeves, and with the thermometer at over a hundred, the phosphates soaked in through every pore of Jurgis' skin, and in five minutes he had a headache, and in fifteen was almost dazed. The blood was pounding in his brain like an engine's throbbing44; there was a frightful45 pain in the top of his skull46, and he could hardly control his hands. Still, with the memory of his four months' siege behind him, he fought on, in a frenzy47 of determination; and half an hour later he began to vomit—he vomited48 until it seemed as if his inwards must be torn into shreds49. A man could get used to the fertilizer mill, the boss had said, if he would make up his mind to it; but Jurgis now began to see that it was a question of making up his stomach.
At the end of that day of horror, he could scarcely stand. He had to catch himself now and then, and lean against a building and get his bearings. Most of the men, when they came out, made straight for a saloon—they seemed to place fertilizer and rattlesnake poison in one class. But Jurgis was too ill to think of drinking—he could only make his way to the street and stagger on to a car. He had a sense of humor, and later on, when he became an old hand, he used to think it fun to board a streetcar and see what happened. Now, however, he was too ill to notice it—how the people in the car began to gasp50 and sputter51, to put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and transfix him with furious glances. Jurgis only knew that a man in front of him immediately got up and gave him a seat; and that half a minute later the two people on each side of him got up; and that in a full minute the crowded car was nearly empty—those passengers who could not get room on the platform having gotten out to walk.
Of course Jurgis had made his home a miniature fertilizer mill a minute after entering. The stuff was half an inch deep in his skin—his whole system was full of it, and it would have taken a week not merely of scrubbing, but of vigorous exercise, to get it out of him. As it was, he could be compared with nothing known to men, save that newest discovery of the savants, a substance which emits energy for an unlimited52 time, without being itself in the least diminished in power. He smelled so that he made all the food at the table taste, and set the whole family to vomiting53; for himself it was three days before he could keep anything upon his stomach—he might wash his hands, and use a knife and fork, but were not his mouth and throat filled with the poison?
And still Jurgis stuck it out! In spite of splitting headaches he would stagger down to the plant and take up his stand once more, and begin to shovel in the blinding clouds of dust. And so at the end of the week he was a fertilizer man for life—he was able to eat again, and though his head never stopped aching, it ceased to be so bad that he could not work.
So there passed another summer. It was a summer of prosperity, all over the country, and the country ate generously of packing house products, and there was plenty of work for all the family, in spite of the packers' efforts to keep a superfluity of labor. They were again able to pay their debts and to begin to save a little sum; but there were one or two sacrifices they considered too heavy to be made for long—it was too bad that the boys should have to sell papers at their age. It was utterly54 useless to caution them and plead with them; quite without knowing it, they were taking on the tone of their new environment. They were learning to swear in voluble English; they were learning to pick up cigar stumps56 and smoke them, to pass hours of their time gambling57 with pennies and dice58 and cigarette cards; they were learning the location of all the houses of prostitution on the "Levee," and the names of the "madames" who kept them, and the days when they gave their state banquets, which the police captains and the big politicians all attended. If a visiting "country customer" were to ask them, they could show him which was "Hinkydink's" famous saloon, and could even point out to him by name the different gamblers and thugs and "hold-up men" who made the place their headquarters. And worse yet, the boys were getting out of the habit of coming home at night. What was the use, they would ask, of wasting time and energy and a possible carfare riding out to the stockyards every night when the weather was pleasant and they could crawl under a truck or into an empty doorway59 and sleep exactly as well? So long as they brought home a half dollar for each day, what mattered it when they brought it? But Jurgis declared that from this to ceasing to come at all would not be a very long step, and so it was decided60 that Vilimas and Nikalojus should return to school in the fall, and that instead Elzbieta should go out and get some work, her place at home being taken by her younger daughter.
Little Kotrina was like most children of the poor, prematurely61 made old; she had to take care of her little brother, who was a cripple, and also of the baby; she had to cook the meals and wash the dishes and clean house, and have supper ready when the workers came home in the evening. She was only thirteen, and small for her age, but she did all this without a murmur62; and her mother went out, and after trudging63 a couple of days about the yards, settled down as a servant of a "sausage machine."
Elzbieta was used to working, but she found this change a hard one, for the reason that she had to stand motionless upon her feet from seven o'clock in the morning till half-past twelve, and again from one till half-past five. For the first few days it seemed to her that she could not stand it—she suffered almost as much as Jurgis had from the fertilizer, and would come out at sundown with her head fairly reeling. Besides this, she was working in one of the dark holes, by electric light, and the dampness, too, was deadly—there were always puddles64 of water on the floor, and a sickening odor of moist flesh in the room. The people who worked here followed the ancient custom of nature, whereby the ptarmigan is the color of dead leaves in the fall and of snow in the winter, and the chameleon65, who is black when he lies upon a stump55 and turns green when he moves to a leaf. The men and women who worked in this department were precisely66 the color of the "fresh country sausage" they made.
The sausage-room was an interesting place to visit, for two or three minutes, and provided that you did not look at the people; the machines were perhaps the most wonderful things in the entire plant. Presumably sausages were once chopped and stuffed by hand, and if so it would be interesting to know how many workers had been displaced by these inventions. On one side of the room were the hoppers, into which men shoveled67 loads of meat and wheelbarrows full of spices; in these great bowls were whirling knives that made two thousand revolutions a minute, and when the meat was ground fine and adulterated with potato flour, and well mixed with water, it was forced to the stuffing machines on the other side of the room. The latter were tended by women; there was a sort of spout68, like the nozzle of a hose, and one of the women would take a long string of "casing" and put the end over the nozzle and then work the whole thing on, as one works on the finger of a tight glove. This string would be twenty or thirty feet long, but the woman would have it all on in a jiffy; and when she had several on, she would press a lever, and a stream of sausage meat would be shot out, taking the casing with it as it came. Thus one might stand and see appear, miraculously69 born from the machine, a wriggling70 snake of sausage of incredible length. In front was a big pan which caught these creatures, and two more women who seized them as fast as they appeared and twisted them into links. This was for the uninitiated the most perplexing work of all; for all that the woman had to give was a single turn of the wrist; and in some way she contrived71 to give it so that instead of an endless chain of sausages, one after another, there grew under her hands a bunch of strings72, all dangling73 from a single center. It was quite like the feat74 of a prestidigitator—for the woman worked so fast that the eye could literally75 not follow her, and there was only a mist of motion, and tangle76 after tangle of sausages appearing. In the midst of the mist, however, the visitor would suddenly notice the tense set face, with the two wrinkles graven in the forehead, and the ghastly pallor of the cheeks; and then he would suddenly recollect77 that it was time he was going on. The woman did not go on; she stayed right there—hour after hour, day after day, year after year, twisting sausage links and racing78 with death. It was piecework, and she was apt to have a family to keep alive; and stern and ruthless economic laws had arranged it that she could only do this by working just as she did, with all her soul upon her work, and with never an instant for a glance at the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen who came to stare at her, as at some wild beast in a menagerie.
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1
hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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rickets
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| n.软骨病，佝偻病，驼背 | |
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filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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fretting
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| n. 微振磨损 adj. 烦躁的, 焦虑的 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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perversity
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| n.任性；刚愎自用 | |
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9
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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10
wringing
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| 淋湿的，湿透的 | |
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11
rebuke
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| v.指责，非难，斥责 [反]praise | |
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12
obdurate
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| adj.固执的，顽固的 | |
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plumes
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| 羽毛( plume的名词复数 )； 羽毛饰； 羽毛状物； 升上空中的羽状物 | |
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14
graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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16
lameness
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| n. 跛, 瘸, 残废 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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21
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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hearsay
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| n.谣传，风闻 | |
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shuddering
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| v.战栗( shudder的现在分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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suffocating
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| a.使人窒息的 | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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caverns
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| 大山洞，大洞穴( cavern的名词复数 ) | |
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29
brew
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| v.酿造，调制 | |
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plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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33
throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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fumes
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| n.(强烈而刺激的)气味，气体 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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spasm
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| n.痉挛，抽搐；一阵发作 | |
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beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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vents
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| （气体、液体等进出的）孔、口( vent的名词复数 )； （鸟、鱼、爬行动物或小哺乳动物的）肛门； 大衣等的)衩口； 开衩 | |
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41
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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42
shovel
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| n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出 | |
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43
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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44
throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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45
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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frenzy
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| n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动 | |
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48
vomited
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49
shreds
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| v.撕碎，切碎( shred的第三人称单数 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件） | |
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50
gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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51
sputter
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| n.喷溅声；v.喷溅 | |
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52
unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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53
vomiting
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| 吐 | |
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54
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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55
stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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56
stumps
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| （被砍下的树的）树桩( stump的名词复数 )； 残肢； （板球三柱门的）柱； 残余部分 | |
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57
gambling
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| n.赌博；投机 | |
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58
dice
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| n.骰子；vt.把（食物）切成小方块，冒险 | |
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59
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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60
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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63
trudging
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的现在分词形式） | |
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64
puddles
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| n.水坑， （尤指道路上的）雨水坑( puddle的名词复数 ) | |
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65
chameleon
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| n.变色龙，蜥蜴；善变之人 | |
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66
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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67
shoveled
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| vt.铲，铲出（shovel的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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68
spout
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| v.喷出，涌出；滔滔不绝地讲；n.喷管；水柱 | |
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69
miraculously
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| ad.奇迹般地 | |
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70
wriggling
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| v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的现在分词 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等）；蠕蠕 | |
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71
contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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72
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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73
dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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74
feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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75
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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76
tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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77
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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78
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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