1 After the elections Jurgis stayed on in Packingtown and kept his job.
2 Now and then, the election was very close, and that was the time the poor man came in.
3 It was a very close election that year, and the echoes of the battle reached even to Packingtown.
4 Early in April the city elections were due, and that meant prosperity for all the powers of graft.
5 Also election day came round again, and Jurgis made half a week's wages out of that, all net profit.
6 It gave them pleasure to believe this, for Scully stood as the people's man, and boasted of it boldly when election day came.
7 In the stockyards this was only in national and state elections, for in local elections the Democratic Party always carried everything.
8 On election day all these powers of vice and crime were one power; they could tell within one per cent what the vote of their district would be, and they could change it at an hour's notice.
9 The officials who ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most votes.
10 It had started its first newspaper in Japan, and elected its first deputy in Argentina; in France it named members of cabinets, and in Italy and Australia it held the balance of power and turned out ministries.
11 Surely Jurgis must know hundreds of men who would like that sort of fun; and there would be the regular Republican leaders and workers to help him out, and they would deliver a big enough majority on election day.
12 The man that had taken Jurgis to be naturalized was one of these "Indians," as they were called; and on election day there would be hundreds of them out, and all with big wads of money in their pockets and free drinks at every saloon in the district.
13 Jurgis, hanging round in dives and gambling houses and brothels, met with the heelers of both parties, and from their conversation he came to understand all the ins and outs of the game, and to hear of a number of ways in which he could make himself useful about election time.
14 Twice a year, in the spring and fall elections, millions of dollars were furnished by the business men and expended by this army; meetings were held and clever speakers were hired, bands played and rockets sizzled, tons of documents and reservoirs of drinks were distributed, and tens of thousands of votes were bought for cash.