The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (easy to read books for adults list TXT) 📕

find no better way to punish him than to leave three weak women and six helpless children to starve and freeze?

That was their law, that was their justice! Jurgis stood upright, trembling with passion, his hands clenched and his arms upraised, his whole soul ablaze with hatred and defiance. Ten thousand curses upon them and their law! Their justice⁠—it was a lie, it was a lie, a hideous, brutal lie, a thing too black and hateful for any world but a world of nightmares. It was a sham and a loathsome mockery. There was no justice, there was no right, anywhere in it⁠—it was only force, it was tyranny, the will and the power, reckless and unrestrained! They had ground him beneath their heel, they had devoured all his substance; they had murdered his old father, they had broken and wrecked his wife, they had crushed and cowed his whole family; and now they were through with him, they had no further use for him⁠—and because he had interfered with them, had gotten in their way, this was what they had done to him! They had put him behind bars, as if he had been a wild beast, a thing without sense or reason, without rights, without affections, without feelings. Nay, they would not even have treated a beast as they had treated him! Would any man in his senses have trapped a wild thing in its lair, and left its young behind to die?

These midnight hours were fateful ones to Jurgis; in them was the beginning of his rebellion, of his outlawry and his unbelief. He had no wit to trace back the social crime to its far sources⁠—he could not say that it was the thing men have called “the system” that was crushing him to the earth; that it was the packers, his masters, who had bought up the law of the land, and had dealt out their brutal will to him from the seat of justice. He only knew that he was wronged, and that the world had wronged him; that the law, that society, with all its powers, had declared itself his foe. And every hour his soul grew blacker, every hour he dreamed new dreams of vengeance, of defiance, of raging, frenzied hate.

“The vilest deeds, like poison weeds,
Bloom well in prison air;
It is only what is good Man
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there;
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.”

So wrote a poet, to whom the world had dealt its justice⁠—

“I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong.
And they do well to hide their hell,
For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon!”

XVII

At seven o’clock the next morning Jurgis was let out to get water to wash his cell⁠—a duty which he performed faithfully, but which most of the prisoners were accustomed to shirk, until their cells became so filthy that the guards interposed. Then he had more “duffers and dope,” and afterward was allowed three hours for exercise, in a long, cement-walled court roofed with glass. Here were all the inmates of the jail crowded together. At one side of the court was a place for visitors, cut off by two heavy wire screens, a foot apart, so that nothing could be passed in to the prisoners; here Jurgis watched anxiously, but there came no one to see him.

Soon after he went back to his cell, a keeper opened the door to let in another prisoner. He was a dapper young fellow, with a light brown mustache and blue eyes, and a graceful figure. He nodded to Jurgis, and then, as the keeper closed the door upon him, began gazing critically about him.

“Well, pal,” he said, as his glance encountered Jurgis again, “good morning.”

“Good morning,” said Jurgis.

“A rum go for Christmas, eh?” added the other.

Jurgis nodded.

The newcomer went to the bunks and inspected the blankets; he lifted up the mattress, and then dropped it with an exclamation. “My God!” he said, “that’s the worst yet.”

He glanced at Jurgis again. “Looks as if it hadn’t been slept in last night. Couldn’t stand it, eh?”

“I didn’t want to sleep last night,” said Jurgis.

“When did you come in?”

“Yesterday.”

The other had another look round, and then wrinkled up his nose. “There’s the devil of a stink in here,” he said, suddenly. “What is it?”

“It’s me,” said Jurgis.

“You?”

“Yes, me.”

“Didn’t they make you wash?”

“Yes, but this don’t wash.”

“What is it?”

“Fertilizer.”

“Fertilizer! The deuce! What are you?”

“I work in the stockyards⁠—at least I did until the other day. It’s in my clothes.”

“That’s a new one on me,” said the newcomer. “I thought I’d been up against ’em all. What are you in for?”

“I hit my boss.”

“Oh⁠—that’s it. What did he do?”

“He⁠—he treated me mean.”

“I see. You’re what’s called an honest workingman!”

“What are you?” Jurgis asked.

“I?” The other laughed. “They say I’m a cracksman,” he said.

“What’s that?” asked Jurgis.

“Safes, and such things,” answered the other.

“Oh,” said Jurgis, wonderingly, and stared at the speaker in awe. “You mean you break into them⁠—you⁠—you⁠—”

“Yes,” laughed the other, “that’s what they say.”

He did not look to be over twenty-two or three, though, as Jurgis found afterward, he was thirty. He spoke like a man of education, like what the world calls a “gentleman.”

“Is that what you’re here for?” Jurgis inquired.

“No,” was the answer. “I’m here for disorderly conduct. They were mad because they couldn’t get any evidence.”

“What’s your name?” the young fellow continued after a pause. “My name’s Duane⁠—Jack Duane. I’ve more than a dozen, but that’s my company one.” He seated himself on the floor with his back to the wall and his legs crossed, and went on talking easily; he soon put Jurgis on a friendly footing⁠—he was evidently a man of the world, used to getting on, and not too proud to hold conversation with