Many towns and cities were taking advantage of the chance to clear out their jails and workhouses⁠—in Detroit the magistrates would release every man who agreed to leave town within twenty-four hours, and agents of the packers were in the courtrooms to ship them right. And meantime trainloads of supplies were coming in for their accommodation, including beer and whiskey, so that they might not be tempted to go outside. They hired thirty young girls in Cincinnati to “pack fruit,” and when they arrived put them at work canning corned-beef, and put cots for them to sleep in a public hallway, through which the men passed. As the gangs came in day and night, under the escort of squads of police, they stowed them away in unused workrooms and storerooms, and in the car-sheds, crowded so closely together that the cots touched. In some places they would use the same room for eating and sleeping, and at night the men would put their cots upon the tables, to keep away from the swarms of rats.

This was an anxious time for Jurgis. If the men were taken back “without discrimination,” he would lose his present place. He sought out the superintendent, who smiled grimly and bade him “wait and see.” Durham’s strikebreakers were few of them leaving.

Whether or not the “settlement” was simply a trick of the packers to gain time, or whether they really expected to break the strike and cripple the unions by the plan, cannot be said; but that night there went out from the office of Durham and Company a telegram to all the big packing-centers, “Employ no union leaders.” And in the morning, when the twenty thousand men thronged into the yards, with their dinner-pails and working-clothes, Jurgis stood near the door of the hog-trimming room, where he had worked before the strike, and saw a throng of eager men, with a score or two of policemen watching them; and he saw a superintendent come out and walk down the line, and pick out man after man that pleased him; and one and after another came, and there were some men up near the head of the line who were never picked⁠—they being the union stewards and delegates, and the men Jurgis had heard making speeches at the meetings. Each time, of course, there were louder murmurings and angrier looks. Over where the cattle-butchers were waiting, Jurgis heard shouts and saw a crowd, and he hurried there.

One big butcher, who was president of the Packing Trades Council, had been passed over five times, and the men were wild with rage; they had appointed a committee of three to go in and see the superintendent, and the committee had made three attempts, and each time the police had clubbed them back from the door. Then there were yells and hoots, continuing until at last the superintendent came to the door. “We all go back or none of us do!” cried a hundred voices. And the other shook his fist at them, and shouted, “You went out of here like cattle, and like cattle you’ll come back!”

Then suddenly the big butcher president leaped upon a pile of stones and yelled: “It’s off, boys. We’ll all of us quit again!” And so the cattle-butchers declared a new strike on the spot; and gathering their members from the other plants, where the same trick had been played, they marched down Packers’ Avenue, which was thronged with a dense mass of workers, cheering wildly. Men who had already got to work on the killing-beds dropped their tools and joined them; some galloped here and there on horseback, shouting the tidings, and within half an hour the whole of Packingtown was on strike again, and beside itself with fury.