get your money, and who used all the virtues to bait their traps with.
The store-keepers plastered up their windows with all sorts of lies to
entice you; the very fences by the wayside, the lampposts and telegraph
poles, were pasted over with lies. The great corporation which employed
you lied to you, and lied to the whole country--from top to bottom it
was nothing but one gigantic lie.

So Jurgis said that he understood it; and yet it was really pitiful, for
the struggle was so unfair--some had so much the advantage! Here he was,
for instance, vowing upon his knees that he would save Ona from harm,
and only a week later she was suffering atrociously, and from the blow
of an enemy that he could not possibly have thwarted. There came a day
when the rain fell in torrents; and it being December, to be wet with it
and have to sit all day long in one of the cold cellars of Brown's was
no laughing matter. Ona was a working girl, and did not own waterproofs
and such things, and so Jurgis took her and put her on the streetcar.
Now it chanced that this car line was owned by gentlemen who were trying
to make money. And the city having passed an ordinance requiring them to
give transfers, they had fallen into a rage; and first they had made a
rule that transfers could be had only when the fare was paid; and later,
growing still uglier, they had made another--that the passenger must ask
for the transfer, the conductor was not allowed to offer it. Now Ona
had been told that she was to get a transfer; but it was not her way to
speak up, and so she merely waited, following the conductor about with
her eyes, wondering when he would think of her. When at last the time
came for her to get out, she asked for the transfer, and was refused.
Not knowing what to make of this, she began to argue with the conductor,
in a language of which he did not understand a word. After warning her
several times, he pulled the bell and the car went on--at which Ona
burst into tears. At the next corner she got out, of course; and as she