Workers - An Experiment in Reality: The West — Chapter 6 - Part II - A Road Builder on the World's Fair Grounds

I had never heard a workman in pessimistic mood so coherent, and I felt sure that the Irishman was ill; for commonly with our class, a full meal and a pipeful at the end of a day’s labor are enough to banish care and to tinge living with a glow of satisfaction.

The suspicion proved true enough, for the man soon began to shake with a malarial chill in our cheerless barrack, and he told me that the ague laid hold of him regularly on alternate days.

It was the loneliness of the fellow that impressed one as he lay shivering in his bunk.

There were hundreds of men in the house, but not one of them was charged with any responsibility for him, and there was no provision for illness.

On his bad days he would force himself through the usual routine, but, when the day was done, there was nothing for him but to lie in lonely misery in his bed.

Not that he whined in the least.

I gathered these facts by inference.

It was the barrenness of his life that he cursed, not its hardness, for this he accepted as a matter of course.

And yet one could not fail to see where finer feeling inflicted a sharper pain in his suffering.

I had marked at once the neatness of his dress, and especially the cleanliness of person by which one distinguishes instantly between a workman and a tramp.

There are interesting degrees of cleanness in workingmen.

One sees it at its best, I think, among those of the building trades.

The stains of their labor are clean in themselves, and the men partake of the wholesomeness of their employment.

The workers at rougher jobs must show the marks of soiling labor, but there is infinite difference between the earth stains of a common laborer and the ingrained, begrimed uncleanness of an unwashed vagrant.

Having in the house, however, so many men, and just at the end of the long period of unemployment, it is inevitable, perhaps, that there should be a few of the number whose status as between workingmen and tramps is not clearly defined.

And some of the consequences are unpleasant.

It was this that the Irishman had in mind as he looked me over critically and was somewhat slow in welcoming me to the cabin.

The same concern showed itself again when he presently told me that the Englishman and he always made up their berths themselves, instead of leaving them for the regular bed-makers, who might communicate vermin from other bunks.

The hint was sufficient, and I hastened to set his mind at rest by assuring him that I heartily endorsed the plan and would follow it faithfully.

The Englishman I did not see until the next morning.

Upon getting up to the six o’clock call, I found that he had turned in without waking me.

We sprang out of bed at the same moment, and almost at a glance I knew him for the ex-Tommy Atkins that he is.

I shall call him Brown.

A wooden chest, studded with brass nails and made fast with a heavy padlock, stood near the foot of his berth.

On it lay his working clothes, not thrown down in confusion, but neatly folded and lying in the order of dress.

He himself was as trim and straight and as clean as a sapling, and when he returned from his wash he fairly sparkled with the afterglow.

Back went the sheets with a single movement of his hand the moment that he was dressed, and over went the mattress, and the pillows began rollicking in the shaking which he gave them.

In marvellously short time the bed was remade and the sheets turned back over the foot of the bunk to admit of proper airing.

We have been thrown together by reason of the fact that neither of us is proof against the lobby for long in the evening.

It is usually dark by the time I have finished supper, and I go first of all to the sitting-room.

It is ablaze with light, and the huge stove is going under full head and all the windows are closed and some scores of men are smoking old pipes.

I have known nights when such a place would have been a most welcome escape from exposure, but having now a choice it is never long before I leave the lobby for the cabin.

Here I generally find Brown seated on the box at the foot of his berth, playing an old fife which is singularly pliant to his touch.

Throwing myself in my bunk I have lain there by the hour together listening to his music and watching him as he beat time to the “British Grenadiers” and the “Blue Bells of Scotland,” and to tunes of no end of barrack-room ballads, wondering the while what vision it was of India or of Burmah, perhaps, or of the Soudan, or possibly of the Afghan frontier that brought that look of longing to his eyes.

He is the soul of soldier-like precision; he never misses a day at work except the one which immediately follows pay-day, and that because he never misses his spree.

The Irishman and I have come to count with perfect regularity upon Brown’s not turning up on the evening when he is paid.

About three or four o’clock on the next morning we hear him open the cabin door softly, and, supporting himself with a hand on the upper berths, move slowly across the floor until he has reached his bed, where he throws himself on his face as he is and sleeps for twenty-four hours.

I was not long a member of Mr. O’Shea’s gang, for at the end of the first week another laborer and I were singled out for special duty on the roads.

But on Wednesday afternoon of that week two men joined the force of unskilled laborers who filled us all with curious interest.

There is another gang of about the same number as Mr. O’Shea’s, with which we are often thrown in our work and which is under the command of a Mr. Russell.

At one o’clock on Wednesday afternoon I went as usual to report with the other men at the superintendent’s office where we receive our orders.

Mr. Dutton, the superintendent, always comes out and looks us over and consults for a few minutes with the sub-bosses, and then orders the various gangs to different sections of the grounds.

Two young men were standing near his office-door on that Wednesday afternoon when I came up at a few minutes before one.

I did not give them a second glance at first, for I took for granted that they were tourists who had entered the grounds by special permission and were now waiting for a guide.

But in another moment I happened to see Mr. Dutton’s clerk beckon them within the office where he took their names and gave to each a metallic disk upon which a number was stamped.

Then they came out again and, taking off their coats, stepped in among the gathering company of workmen and waited to be assigned.

By this time we were all staring at them agape, but they stood the ordeal with a frank unconsciousness which filled me with admiration.

They were about of age, two clean-cut, well-groomed, clear-eyed English boys, who looked as though they might be public-school bred, and I noticed that their coats bore the name of a London tailor.

One, a brown-haired lad, with large, sober, brown eyes and a manner of considerable reserve, was exceedingly good-looking, and the other, a fair-haired, fair-skinned, alert-looking boy, plainly the spokesman for the two, had a face of unusually fine drawing.

Mr. Dutton hesitated a moment in their case, but finally ordered them to join Mr. Russell’s gang, and in a few minutes we were widely separated.

Repeatedly in the early afternoon I found myself thinking about them and wondering why it was that they must earn their bread by unskilled labor.

Two hours of the afternoon remained when there came an order from Mr. Dutton to our gang to repair to the Transportation Building.

We found, upon getting there, that we had been summoned to reinforce Mr. Russell’s men, who were unloading from a car two large steam-rollers.

Again I saw the young Englishmen, and I had a chance to watch them at work.

By this time the gang-men had sated their curiosity in staring, and now ignored the lads as being anything but laborers with themselves, which was much the best-bred thing that they could have done.

As a preliminary to unloading, we had to carry to the car some heavy wooden blocks to serve as supports to an inclined plane by which the machines could be slid to the ground.

It sometimes required four and even six men together to lift these blocks, and repeatedly I found myself next in line to the new-comers.

Their linen collars were wilting with the sweat of labor, and it had apparently not occurred to them to take them off.

Their shirts, of delicate color, were turned up above their elbows with gold link-buttons dangling from the cuffs.

The rough wood was fretting their bare white arms cruelly.

I had a chance presently to speak to one of them, and I showed him how he could get a hold which would not be so chafing.

In a moment of leisure he came up and thanked me frankly, and volunteered the information that his friend and he were but a week over from England and, having failed utterly to find other work in Chicago where they had supposed that employment was plentiful, they were glad enough in an extremity to accept this means of living.

Most pluckily have they stuck at it.

I have never again been associated with them in a job, but, I see them almost every day, and through rain and shine they have been the steadiest members of their gang.

Places better suited to them will be found, no doubt, as the general work progresses; and that will not be long, I hope, for just now the boys are at a considerable disadvantage.

It was only two or three mornings ago that I happened to meet them again near Mr. Dutton’s office, where they had been sent to fetch some tools.

The fairer boy wore a bandage which covered his left forearm and most of the hand.

I asked him what had happened, and he explained to me how that in handling some old sleepers he had missed his hold in one case, and, with the fall of the heavy timber, a rusty iron nail tore down through his arm and the palm of his hand, leaving a ragged wound open nearly to the bone.

He had had it dressed promptly by a good surgeon, who reassured him as to danger of complications.

But it had taken all his companion’s savings and his own to pay the original fee, and they were in arrears for the daily dressing.

Luckily, however, he was still able to work, and Mr. Russell kept him employed, he told me, in ways which brought his injured arm very little into play.

Those of us who belong permanently to gangs such as Mr. O’Shea’s and Mr. Russell’s are known as “regulars,” to distinguish us from the hands who are taken on, a day at a time, for some particular need.

Quite the most efficient “regular” in my gang is a certain Henry Jerkener, who is that rare exception, so far as my experience goes, a native American in a company of unskilled laborers.

“Harry,” as he is called, and I were early assigned to special duty.

Mr. Dutton beckoned us aside one afternoon and ordered us to report to him at ten o’clock the next morning, telling us that our day, beginning henceforth at ten, would last until seven in the evening instead of five o’clock.

And our wages would be raised from . 50 to . 75 a day.

Our work was to be the general care of all the plank roads on the grounds.

They had been put in fairly good condition, but they received hard usage, and constant repairs were necessary.

We were, therefore, to give our attention, up to five o’clock in the afternoon, to particular sections of the road which were most in need of mending, and after five, when the work for the day had ceased, our duty was to go over all the roads and see that they were in condition for the beginning of the carting in the morning.

Harry appeared delighted with the arrangement.

Not that he took any special stock in me as an assistant, but because, however indifferent a workman, at least I was an American, and he would be free of the gang of Irish regulars and himself in charge of the work, instead of being under the orders of Mr. O’Shea.

Harry’s good-humor is proof against anything, apparently, his temperament being that of a sunny May morning.

But if there is anything which bores him, it is to be ordered about by an Irish sub-boss.

I did not discover this until after we had left the gang.

So long as he was one of their number he was the life of the crew, jolly, high-spirited, with a ready flow of banter that was never delicate and never ill-tempered, always foremost in the work, having at command a fund of resourceful ingenuity which made him the real leader and director of the men while the boss looked on in silence.

But after we had been assigned to special duty he bloomed into new jollity, which is at its best whenever in our work we heave in sight of the old gang.

It is deliciously funny at such times to watch Harry.

The men are probably fretting and straining over some heavy lifting or other difficult task.

He first lets fly some irritating raillery in which he addresses them as “terriers;” and then, taking up a position within ear-shot, he begins to sing with a capital Irish brogue: “Oh, ye work all day for Paddy O’Shea, Dhrrrill, ye terriers, dhrrrill!

” Human nature cannot endure this for long, and presently a shower of sticks and tufts of turf drive Harry from his position and put an end for the time to his song.

Our place is by no means a sinecure.

The roads are constantly falling into unrepair and a deal of hard work is necessary to keep them in order.

Pick and shovel work, that most heart-breaking of manual toil so far as my experience goes, is mostly in demand, for the old trenches must be kept open and new ones dug, and sometimes the sides of long sections of the road must be buried under a layer of earth to prevent the bare planks from warping in the sun.

After six hours of such labor there remain two in the early evening in which we go over every foot of roadway on the grounds and make whatever immediate repairs are necessary.

At seven o’clock, Harry reports to the fire department, and then we are free.

It is not altogether easy to account for Harry as a common laborer.

A well-set-up, muscular American of about fifty, with a singularly intelligent, shrewd face and the merriest of blue eyes, he might be, from his appearance, a well-to-do contractor.

Only once with me has he touched upon the general subject of his past, and then he intimated that formerly he was well off, but that in his business relations he had always passed as a “good fellow.

” “And that means, you know,” he said, turning upon me with a significant look, “that means a ‘damn fool!

’”