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

filled halfway up, and at the door men were packed tight enough to walk upon. There were three elderly gentlemen in black upon the platform, and a young lady who played the piano in front. First they sang a hymn, and then one of the three, a tall, smooth-shaven man, very thin, and wearing black spectacles, began an address. Jurgis heard smatterings of it, for the reason that terror kept him awake⁠—he knew that he snored abominably, and to have been put out just then would have been like a sentence of death to him.

The evangelist was preaching “sin and redemption,” the infinite grace of God and His pardon for human frailty. He was very much in earnest, and he meant well, but Jurgis, as he listened, found his soul filled with hatred. What did he know about sin and suffering⁠—with his smooth, black coat and his neatly starched collar, his body warm, and his belly full, and money in his pocket⁠—and lecturing men who were struggling for their lives, men at the death-grapple with the demon powers of hunger and cold!⁠—This, of course, was unfair; but Jurgis felt that these men were out of touch with the life they discussed, that they were unfitted to solve its problems; nay, they themselves were part of the problem⁠—they were part of the order established that was crushing men down and beating them! They were of the triumphant and insolent possessors; they had a hall, and a fire, and food and clothing and money, and so they might preach to hungry men, and the hungry men must be humble and listen! They were trying to save their souls⁠—and who but a fool could fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies?

At eleven the meeting closed, and the desolate audience filed out into the snow, muttering curses up on the few traitors who had got repentance and gone upon the platform. It was yet an hour before the station-house would open, and Jurgis had no overcoat⁠—and was weak from a long illness. During that hour he nearly perished. He was obliged to run hard to keep his blood moving at all⁠—and then he came back to the station-house and found a crowd blocking the street before the door! This was in the month of January, 1904, when the country was on the verge of “hard times,” and the newspapers were reporting the shutting down of factories every day⁠—it was estimated that a million and a half of men were thrown out of work before the spring. So all the hiding-places of the city were crowded, and before that station-house door men fought and tore each other like savage beasts. When at last the place was jammed and they shut the doors, half the crowd was still outside; and Jurgis, with his helpless arm, was among them. There was no choice then but to go to a lodging-house and spend another dime. It really broke his heart to do this, at half-past twelve o’clock, after he had wasted the night at the meeting and on the street. He would be turned out of the lodging-house promptly at seven⁠—they had the shelves which served as bunks so contrived that they could be dropped, and any man who was slow about obeying orders could be tumbled to the floor.

This was one day, and the cold spell lasted for fourteen of them. At the end of six days every cent of Jurgis’s money was gone; and then he went out on the streets to beg for his life.

He would begin as soon as the business of the city was moving. He would sally forth from a saloon, and, after making sure there was no policeman in sight, would approach every likely-looking person who passed him, telling his woeful story and pleading for a nickel or a dime. Then when he got one, he would dart round the corner and return to his base to get warm; and his victim, seeing him do this, would go away, vowing that he would never give a cent to a beggar again. The victim never paused to ask where else Jurgis could have gone under the circumstances⁠—where he, the victim, would have gone. At the saloon Jurgis could not only get more food and better food than he could buy in any restaurant for the same money, but a drink in the bargain to warm him up. Also he could find a comfortable seat by a fire, and could chat with a companion until he was as warm as toast. At the saloon, too, he felt at home. Part of the saloon-keeper’s business was to offer a home and refreshments to beggars in exchange for the proceeds of their foragings; and was there anyone else in the whole city who would do this⁠—would the victim have done it himself?

Poor Jurgis might have been expected to make a successful beggar. He was just out of the hospital, and desperately sick-looking, and with a helpless arm; also he had no overcoat, and shivered pitifully. But, alas, it was again the case of the honest merchant, who finds that the genuine and unadulterated article is driven to the wall by the artistic counterfeit. Jurgis, as a beggar, was simply a blundering amateur in competition with organized and scientific professionalism. He was just out of the hospital⁠—but the story was worn threadbare, and how could he prove it? He had his arm in a sling⁠—and it was a device a regular beggar’s little boy would have scorned. He was pale and shivering⁠—but they were made up with cosmetics, and had studied the art of chattering their teeth. As to his being without an overcoat, among them you would meet men you could swear had on nothing but a ragged linen duster and a pair of cotton trousers⁠—so cleverly had they concealed the several suits of all-wool