possible. And all the men of the same rank were pitted against each
other; the accounts of each were kept separately, and every man lived
in terror of losing his job, if another made a better record than he. So
from top to bottom the place was simply a seething caldron of jealousies
and hatreds; there was no loyalty or decency anywhere about it, there
was no place in it where a man counted for anything against a dollar.
And worse than there being no decency, there was not even any honesty.
The reason for that? Who could say? It must have been old Durham in the
beginning; it was a heritage which the self-made merchant had left to
his son, along with his millions.

Jurgis would find out these things for himself, if he stayed there long
enough; it was the men who had to do all the dirty jobs, and so there
was no deceiving them; and they caught the spirit of the place, and did
like all the rest. Jurgis had come there, and thought he was going to
make himself useful, and rise and become a skilled man; but he would
soon find out his error--for nobody rose in Packingtown by doing good
work. You could lay that down for a rule--if you met a man who was
rising in Packingtown, you met a knave. That man who had been sent to
Jurgis' father by the boss, he would rise; the man who told tales
and spied upon his fellows would rise; but the man who minded his own
business and did his work--why, they would "speed him up" till they had
worn him out, and then they would throw him into the gutter.

Jurgis went home with his head buzzing. Yet he could not bring himself
to believe such things--no, it could not be so. Tamoszius was simply
another of the grumblers. He was a man who spent all his time fiddling;
and he would go to parties at night and not get home till sunrise, and
so of course he did not feel like work. Then, too, he was a puny little
chap; and so he had been left behind in the race, and that was why he