Out of This Furnace: Part 1, Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

Dubik’s horrific death weighs heavily on Kracha. A few weeks after the accident, he, Dorta, and Mike are talking in Dorta’s kitchen. Kracha vows to get out of the steel mill, both to escape the possibility of an early death for himself, as well as to escape the piddling wages that keep him trapped there. Dorta comments that Mike and Dubik had long discussed leaving the mill. “What was the use of coming to America if not to live better than we lived in the old country?” Dubik once said.

After Kracha lets Dorta talk for a while, he tells her that he wants to purchase Mrs. Miller’s butcher shop. “The way to get rich in America is to go into business,” he states, citing his experience butchering and sausage-making on the railroad as reason to become an entrepreneur. In October 1895, Kracha signs the papers and becomes a butcher shop owner.