seven o'clock
Then she took to trying the stores and saloons , and when this failed she even traveled over into the far-distant regions near the lake front , where lived the rich people in great palaces , and begged there for some sort of work that could be done by a person who did not know English . The men upon the killing beds felt also the effects of the slump which had turned Marija out ; but they felt it in a different way , and a way which made Jurgis understand at last all their bitterness . The big packers did not turn their hands off and close down , like the canning factories ; but they began to run for shorter and shorter hours . They had always required the men to be on the killing beds and ready for work at seven o'clock , although there was almost never any work to be done till the buyers out in the yards had gotten to work , and some cattle had come over the chutes . That would often be ten or eleven o'clock , which was bad enough , in all conscience ; but now , in the slack season , they would perhaps not have a thing for their men to do till late in the afternoon . And so they would have to loaf around , in a place where the thermometer might be twenty degrees below zero ! At first one would see them running about , or skylarking with each other , trying to keep warm ; but before the day was over they would become quite chilled through and exhausted , and , when the cattle finally came , so near frozen that to move was an agony .