“Exactly,” said Scully, “but you’d better. Take my word for it, the strike will be over in a few days, and the men will be beaten; and meantime what you get out of it will belong to you. Do you see?”

And Jurgis saw. He went back to the yards, and into the workroom. The men had left a long line of hogs in various stages of preparation, and the foreman was directing the feeble efforts of a score or two of clerks and stenographers and office-boys to finish up the job and get them into the chilling-rooms. Jurgis went straight up to him and announced, “I have come back to work, Mr. Murphy.”

The boss’s face lighted up. “Good man!” he cried. “Come ahead!”

“Just a moment,” said Jurgis, checking his enthusiasm. “I think I ought to get a little more wages.”

“Yes,” replied the other, “of course. What do you want?”

Jurgis had debated on the way. His nerve almost failed him now, but he clenched his hands. “I think I ought to have three dollars a day,” he said.

“All right,” said the other, promptly; and before the day was out our friend discovered that the clerks and stenographers and office-boys were getting five dollars a day, and then he could have kicked himself!

So Jurgis became one of the new “American heroes,” a man whose virtues merited comparison with those of the martyrs of Lexington and Valley Forge. The resemblance was not complete, of course, for Jurgis was generously paid and comfortably clad, and was provided with a spring-cot and a mattress and three substantial meals a day; also he was perfectly at ease, and safe from all peril of life and limb, save only in the case that a desire for beer should lead him to venture outside of the stockyards gates. And even in the exercise of this privilege he was not left unprotected; a good part of the inadequate police force of Chicago was suddenly diverted from its work of hunting criminals, and rushed out to serve him.

The police, and the strikers also, were determined that there should be no violence; but there was another party interested which was minded to the contrary⁠—and that was the press. On the first day of his life as a strikebreaker Jurgis quit work early, and in a spirit of bravado he challenged three men of his acquaintance to go outside and get a drink. They accepted, and went through the big Halsted Street gate, where several policemen were watching, and also some union pickets, scanning sharply those who passed in and out. Jurgis and his companions went south on Halsted Street, past the hotel, and then suddenly half a dozen men started across the street toward them and proceeded to argue with them concerning the error of their ways. As the arguments were not taken in the proper spirit, they went on to threats; and suddenly one of them jerked off the hat of one of the four and flung it over the fence. The man started after it, and then, as a cry of “Scab!” was raised and a dozen people came running out of saloons and doorways, a second man’s heart failed him and he followed. Jurgis and the fourth stayed long enough to give themselves the satisfaction of a quick exchange of blows, and then they, too, took to their heels and fled back of the hotel and into the yards again.