Jurgis Rudkus Quotes

“It was nearly a year and a half ago that Jurgis had met Ona, at a horse fair a hundred miles from home. Jurgis had never expected to get married – he had laughed at it as a foolish trap for a man to walk into; but here, without ever having spoken a word to her, with no more than the exchange of half a dozen smiles, he found himself, purple in the face with embarrassment and terror, asking her parents to sell her to him for his wife – and offering his father’s two horses he had been sent to the fair to sell. But Ona’s father proved as a rock – the girl was yet a child, and he was a rich man, and his daughter was not to be had in that way. So Jurgis went home with a heavy heart, and that spring and summer toiled and tried hard to forget. In the fall, after the harvest was over, he saw that it would not do, and tramped the full fortnight’s journey that lay between him and Ona.”

“As it chanced, [Jurgis] had been hurt on a Monday, and had just paid for his last week’s board and his room rent, and spent nearly all the balance of his Saturday’s pay. He had less than seventy-five cents in his pockets, and a dollar and a half due him for the day’s work he had done before he was hurt. He might possibly have sued the company, and got some damages for his injuries, but he did not know this, and it was not the company’s business to tell him.”

“There came no answer to it, however, and at last, the day before New Year’s, Jurgis bade good-by to Jack Duane. The latter gave him his address, or rather the address of his mistress, and made Jurgis promise to look him up. ‘Maybe I could help you out of a hole some day,’ he said, and added that he was sorry to have him go.”

″[Jurgis] could not hear it often enough; he could not ask with enough variations. Yes, they had bought the house, they had really bought it. It belonged to them, they had only to pay the money and it would be all right. Then Jurgis covered his face with his hands, for there were tears in his eyes, and he felt like a fool. But he had had such a horrible fright; strong man as he was, it left him almost too weak to stand up.”

“Ona might have married and left them, but she would not, for she loved Teta Elzbieta. It was Jonas who suggested that they all go to America, where a friend of his had gotten rich. He would work, for his part, and the women would work, and some of the children, doubtless – they would live somehow. Jurgis, too, had heard of America. That was a country where, they said, a man might earn three rubles a day; and Jurgis figured what three rubles a day would mean, with prices as they were where he lived, and decided forthwith that he would go to America and marry, and be a rich man in the bargain. In that country, rich or poor, a man was free, it was said; he did not have to go into the army, he did not have to pay out his money to rascally officials – he might do as he pleased, and count himself as good as any other man.”

“Excepting for that one walk when he left jail, when he was too much worried to notice anything, and for a few times that he had rested in the city parks in the winter time when he was out of work, he had literally never seen a tree! And now he felt like a bird lifted up and borne away upon a gale; he stopped and stared at each new sight of wonder—at a herd of cows, and a meadow full of daisies, at hedgerows set thick with June roses, at little birds singing in the trees.”

“So in the summer time they had all set out for America. At the last moment there joined them Marija Berczynskas, who was a cousin of Ona’s. Marija was an orphan, and had worked since childhood for a rich farmer of Vilna, who beat her regularly. It was only at the age of twenty that it had occurred to Marija to try her strength, when she had risen up and nearly murdered the man, and then come away.”

″‘Little one,’ he said, in a low voice, ‘do not worry – it will not matter to us. We will pay them all somehow. I will work harder.’ That was always what Jurgis said. Ona had grown used to it as the solution of all difficulties – ‘I will work harder!’ He had said that in Lithuania when one official had taken his passport from him, and another had arrested him for being without it, and the two had divided a third of his belongings. He had said it again in New York, when the smooth-spoken agent had taken them in hand and made them pay such high prices, and almost prevented their leaving his place, in spite of their paying. Now he said it a third time, and Ona drew a deep breath; it was so wonderful to have a husband, just like a grown woman – and a husband who could solve all problems, and who was so big and strong!”

“Jurgis had first come to the stockyards he had been as clean as any workingman could well be. But later on, what with sickness and cold and hunger and discouragement, and the filthiness of his work, and the vermin in his home, he had given up washing in winter, and in summer only as much of him as would go into a basin. He had had a shower bath in jail, but nothing since—and now he would have a swim!”

“It was like breakers upon a beach; there was new water, but the wave looked just the same. He strolled about and talked with them, and the biggest of them told tales of their prowess, while those who were weaker, or younger and inexperienced, gathered round and listened in admiring silence. The last time he was there, Jurgis had thought of little but his family; but now he was free to listen to these men, and to realize that he was one of them—that their point of view was his point of view, and that the way they kept themselves alive in the world was the way he meant to do it in the future.”

“Jurgis was confident of his ability to get work for himself, unassisted by any one. As we have said before, he was not mistaken in this. He had gone to Brown’s and stood there not more than half an hour before one of the bosses noticed his form towering above the rest, and signaled to him. The colloquy which followed was brief and to the point: ‘Speak English?’ ‘No; Lit-uanian.’ (Jurgis had studied this word carefully.) ‘Job?’ ‘Je.’ (A nod.)”

“Better luck than all this could hardly have been hoped for; there was only one of them left to seek a place. Jurgis was determined that Teta Elzbieta should stay at home to keep house, and that Ona should help her. He would not have Ona working – he was not that sort of a man, he said, and she was not that sort of a woman. It would be a strange thing if a man like him could not support the family, with the help of the board of Jonas and Marija. He would not even hear of letting the children go to work – there were schools here in America for children, Jurgis had heard, to which they could go for nothing. […] Jurgis would have it that Stanislovas should learn to speak English, and grow up to be a skilled man.”

“Promptly at seven the next morning Jurgis reported for work. He came to the door that had been pointed out to him, and there he waited for nearly two hours. The boss had meant for him to enter, but had not said this, and so it was only when on his way out to hire another man that he came upon Jurgis. He gave him a good cursing, but as Jurgis did not understand a word of it he did not object.”

“So, bit by bit, the feast takes form – there is a ham and a dish of sauerkraut, boiled rice, macaroni, bologna sausages, great piles of penny buns, bowls of milk, and foaming pitchers of beer. There is also, not six feet from your back, the bar, where you may order all you please and do not have to pay for it. “Eiksz! Graicziau!” screams Marija Berczynskas, and falls to work herself – for there is more upon the stove inside that will be spoiled if it be not eaten.”

“The peculiar bitterness of all this was that Jurgis saw so plainly the meaning of it. In the beginning he had been fresh and strong, and he had gotten a job the first day; but now he was second-hand, a damaged article, so to speak, and they did not want him. They had got the best of him – they had worn him out, with their speeding-up and their carelessness, and now they had thrown him away! And Jurgis would make the acquaintance of others of these unemployed men and find that they had all had the same experience.”

“There were hardened criminals and innocent men too poor to give bail; old men, and boys literally not yet in their teens. They were the drainage of the great festering ulcer of society […] Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.”

“For every one that Jurgis spoke to assured him that it was a waste of time to seek employment for the old man in Packingtown. Szedvilas told him that the packers did not even keep the men who had grown old in their own service – to say nothing of taking on new ones. And not only was it the rule here, it was the rule everywhere in America, so far as he knew.”

“A very few days of practical experience in this land of high wages had been sufficient to make clear to them the cruel fact that it was also a land of high prices, and that in it the poor man was almost as poor as in any other corner of the earth; and so there vanished in a night all the wonderful dreams of wealth that had been haunting Jurgis. What had made the discovery all the more painful was that they were spending, at American prices, money which they had earned at home rates of wages – and so were really being cheated by the world! The last two days they had all but starved themselves – it made them quite sick to pay the prices that the railroad people asked them for food.”

″‘I hit him, sir,’ said Jurgis. ‘Say ‘your Honor,″ said the officer, pinching his arm hard. ‘Your Honor,’ said Jurgis, obediently. ‘You tried to choke him?’ ‘Yes, sir, your Honor.’ ‘Ever been arrested before?’ ‘No, sir, your Honor.’ ‘What have you to say for yourself?’ Jurgis hesitated. What had he to say? In two years and a half he had learned to speak English for practical purposes, but these had never included the statement that some one had intimidated and seduced his wife.”

“Little one, do not worry—it will not matter to us. We will pay them all somehow. I will work harder.”

“Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn more money—I will work harder.”

“Yes, but what sort of men? Broken down tramps and good for nothings, fellows who have spent all their money drinking, and want to get more for it. Do you want me to believe that with these arms and he would clench his fists and hold them up in the air, so that you might see the rolling muscles that with these arms people will ever let me starve?”

“Why, when they said ‘Chicago,’ people no longer pointed in some direction...”

“it was quite in vain that the agent hinted at promptness—”

Yes, they had bought the house, they had really bought it. It belonged to them, they had only to pay the money and it would be all right.

Jurgis and Ona were very much in love; they had waited a long time - it was now well into the second year, and Jurgis judged everything by the criterion of its helping or hindering their union.

Even the tricks and cruelties he saw at Durham’ s had little meaning for him just then, save as they might happen to affect his future with Ona.

“Perhaps they had a secret process for making chickens chemically—who knows?”

Each crisis would leave Jurgis more and more frightened, phrases of anguish and despair now and then, amid her frantic weeping.

“I was afraid—I was just afraid!” sobbed Ona. “I knew you wouldn’t know where I was, and I didn’t know what you might do. I tried to get home, but I was so tired. Oh, Jurgis, Jurgis!”

“She said here,” insisted Jurgis. “She told me all about you, and how you were, and what you said. Are you sure? You haven’t forgotten? You weren’t away?”

She was lost on the street all night, and I’ve only just succeeded in getting her quiet.

“You have lied to me, I say!” he cried. “You told me you had been to Jadvyga’s house that other night, and you hadn’t. You had been where you were last night—somewheres downtown, for I saw you get off the car. Where were you?”

“If you will only do it! If you will only—only believe me! It wasn’t my fault—I couldn’t help it—it will be all right—it is nothing—it is no harm. Oh, Jurgis—please, please!”

What did a man who worked in Durham’s fertilizer mill care about anything that the world might do to him!

“it will not be worth your while to wait—there will be nothing for you here.”

“The first time I had an accident, and the last time I was sent up for a month. I see. Well, I’ll give you a trial. Come early tomorrow and ask for Mr. Thomas.”

This let him into a lodging-house on several nights when he might otherwise have frozen to death; and it also gave him a chance now and then to buy a newspaper in the morning and hunt up jobs while his rivals were watching and waiting for a paper to be thrown away.

“How much do you pay?” she demanded. “Must I pay now—right away?” “Yes; all my customers do.” “I—I haven’t much money,” Jurgis began in an agony of dread. “I’ve been in—in trouble—and my money is gone. But I’ll pay you—every cent—just as soon as I can; I can work—”

Their sacrifices in the beginning, their three hundred dollars that they had scraped together, all they owned in the world, all that stood between them and starvation!

“There ought to be work a strong fellow like you can find to do, in the cities, or some place, in the winter time.”

“Yes,” said Jurgis, “that’s what they all think; and so they crowd into the cities, and when they have to beg or steal to live, then people ask ‘em why they don’t go into the country, where help is scarce.”

“Please, sir,” he began, in the usual formula, “will you give me the price of a lodging? I’ve had a broken arm, and I can’t work, and I’ve not a cent in my pocket. I’m an honest working-man, sir, and I never begged before! It’s not my fault, sir—”

“No money! Ho, ho—less be chums, ole boy—jess like me! No money, either—almost busted! Why don’t you go home, then, same’s me? “I haven’t any home,” said Jurgis.”

“Have ‘em!” roared Jurgis, with fierce passion.

“I could be a Democrat,”

“I thought I could count on you,” began Jurgis. “Yes,” responded Scully, “so you could—I never yet went back on a friend.

Yes, he knew the work, the whole of it, and he could teach it to others.

Precisely as before, Jurgis came away with a piece of his enemy’s flesh between his teeth;

“It was a man that did me a mean trick once,”

“I got into a quarrel with a foreman—not my own boss, sir—and struck him.”

“How would it suit you to be a night watchman?” “That wouldn’t do, sir. I have to be among the men at night.”

He had been shorn, at one cut, of all those mysterious weapons whereby he had been able to make a living easily and to escape the consequences of his actions.

“No,” she answered, “I don’t blame you. We never have—any of us. You did your best—the job was too much for us.”

“I’m wanted by the police,”

“And all of the trusts that I have named are railroad trusts—save only the Beef Trust!”

“The Beef Trust has defied the railroads—”

“And you poor common people watch and applaud the job, and think it’s all done for you, and never dream that it is really the grand climax of the century-long battle of commercial competition—”

It was so incomprehensible how a man could fail to see it!

“You have lost the strike!” “And now what are you going to do about it?”

“It’s a lie! It’s a lie!”

“Stand away a little, please; can’t you see the comrade is worn out?”

“We will make a fighter out of you!”

“Perhaps tomorrow we can do better,”

“They say anything. They’re in, and they know they can’t get out. But they didn’t like it when they began—you’d find out—it’s always misery!

“You found me just in the nick of time,”

“I’ll stand by you—I’ll help you till you can get some work.”

“What are you talking?—I won’t give you money,” she added, as she followed him to the door, “because you’ll drink it up, and do yourself harm.”

“Here’s a quarter for you now, and go along, and they’ll be so glad to have you back, you won’t have time to feel ashamed.”

“If you would try to listen, comrade, perhaps you would be interested.”

She was young and beautiful; she wore fine clothes, and was what is called a “lady.” And she called him “comrade”!

“There is no wilderness where I can hide from these things, there is no haven where I can escape them; though I travel to the ends of the earth, I find the same accursed system—”

“Therefore I cannot rest, I cannot be silent; therefore I cast aside comfort and happiness, health and good repute—-and go out into the world and cry out the pain of my spirit!”

There are a hundred thousand mothers who are living in misery and squalor, struggling to earn enough to feed their little ones!

The whole power of mankind belongs to them, forever and beyond recall—do what it can, strive as it will, humanity lives for them and dies for them!

Will they write the charter of your liberties? Will they forge you the sword of your deliverance, will they marshal you the army and lead it to the fray?

It will be by money paid for with hunger, by knowledge stolen from sleep, by thoughts communicated under the shadow of the gallows!

“What is the murder of them that kill the body, to the murder of them that kill the soul?”

“By God! By God! By God!”