scraps of meat and odds and ends of refuse were caught, and every few
days it was the old man's task to clean these out, and shovel their
contents into one of the trucks with the rest of the meat!

This was the experience of Antanas; and then there came also Jonas and
Marija with tales to tell. Marija was working for one of the independent
packers, and was quite beside herself and outrageous with triumph over
the sums of money she was making as a painter of cans. But one day she
walked home with a pale-faced little woman who worked opposite to her,
Jadvyga Marcinkus by name, and Jadvyga told her how she, Marija, had
chanced to get her job. She had taken the place of an Irishwoman who had
been working in that factory ever since any one could remember. For over
fifteen years, so she declared. Mary Dennis was her name, and a long
time ago she had been seduced, and had a little boy; he was a cripple,
and an epileptic, but still he was all that she had in the world to
love, and they had lived in a little room alone somewhere back of
Halsted Street, where the Irish were. Mary had had consumption, and all
day long you might hear her coughing as she worked; of late she had been
going all to pieces, and when Marija came, the "forelady" had suddenly
decided to turn her off. The forelady had to come up to a certain
standard herself, and could not stop for sick people, Jadvyga explained.
The fact that Mary had been there so long had not made any difference
to her--it was doubtful if she even knew that, for both the forelady and
the superintendent were new people, having only been there two or three
years themselves. Jadvyga did not know what had become of the poor
creature; she would have gone to see her, but had been sick herself. She
had pains in her back all the time, Jadvyga explained, and feared
that she had womb trouble. It was not fit work for a woman, handling
fourteen-pound cans all day.