And the other replied, “It’s a go, then; I’m your man.”

So Jurgis went out to the stockyards again, and was introduced to the political lord of the district, the boss of Chicago’s mayor. It was Scully who owned the brickyards and the dump and the ice pond⁠—though Jurgis did not know it. It was Scully who was to blame for the unpaved street in which Jurgis’s child had been drowned; it was Scully who had put into office the magistrate who had first sent Jurgis to jail; it was Scully who was principal stockholder in the company which had sold him the ramshackle tenement, and then robbed him of it. But Jurgis knew none of these things⁠—any more than he knew that Scully was but a tool and puppet of the packers. To him Scully was a mighty power, the “biggest” man he had ever met.

He was a little, dried-up Irishman, whose hands shook. He had a brief talk with his visitor, watching him with his ratlike eyes, and making up his mind about him; and then he gave him a note to Mr. Harmon, one of the head managers of Durham’s:⁠—