Workers - An Experiment in Reality: The West — Chapter 2 - Part I - Living by Odd Jobs

LIVING BY ODD JOBS

No. -- BLUE ISLAND AVENUE, CHICAGO,

Saturday, December 19, 1891. When life is lived in its simplest terms, one is brought to marvellous intimacy with vital processes.

And through this intimacy no disclosure is more wonderful than that of nature’s quick response.

Exhausted by hard labor, until your muscles quiver in impotent loss of energy, you sit down to eat and drink, and rise up to the play of a physical revival wherein you are renewed by the mystery of intussusception, and your responsive mood quickens to the tension of the involution whence life’s energies flow new and fresh again.

Another hour may bring as great a change, and the full tide of your rising spirits may set swiftly back.

It is as though you were a little child once more, and your moods obedient to little things.

When living is a daily struggle with the problems of what you shall eat and what you shall drink, and wherewithal you shall be clothed, you take no anxious thought for the morrow, quite content to let the morrow take thought for the things of itself, for sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Your heart will leap with hope at any brightening of your lot, and will sink in deep despair when the way grows dark.

The road of your salvation is by the strait gate and the narrow way of courage and persistent effort and provident foresight, and whence are these to come to you whose courage is born of warmth and a square meal, and whose despair comes with returning hunger?

A world all bright with hope can be had on the terms of heat and food, and the sense of these can be induced for a nickel in a “barrel-house.

” When Clark and I awakened in the early morning, after our first night in the station, the dull gray dawn was dimming the gas, and in the lurid light we could see a writhing movement in the prostrate coiling mass of reeking humanity about us.

We had lost the feeling of hunger, but a feverish thirst was burning to the roots of our tongues.

We could scarcely move for the pain of sore and stiffened muscles, and I thought at first that my right leg was paralyzed from the night watchman’s kick.

Only a few hours before, we had entered the station-house from the streets in eager willingness for any escape from their cold exposure, and now with intensified desire we longed for the outer air at any cost of hardship.

But we were not free to go out at once.

The officer on duty brusquely ordered us back among the men when we approached him with a request to be allowed to leave.

We were greeted with a burst of mocking glee as we walked back to our places, and among the comments was a call to me: “What have you pinched, whiskers?

” The reason for the delay was soon apparent, for in a few moments we were all marched down the main corridor and into the passage which opened nearest to the registrar’s desk.

There we waited, closely huddled, the iron door locked upon us, while an examination was made as to whether any of the prisoners had been robbed.

When all was reported right, the door was unlocked and we were allowed to file slowly out past the entrance of the kitchen.

There stood the cook with an assistant, and he gave to each man as he passed a bowl of steaming coffee and a piece of bread.

We drank the coffee at a gulp, and each man was eating bread with wolfish bites as he climbed the steps and walked out into the street.

[Illustration: THE POLICE-STATION BREAKFAST.

] Every succeeding breath in the outer air seemed to carry its cleansing coolness farther down into our lungs.

It was like the feeling of cold water to a parched throat.

The sky was overcast, but the storm had ceased, and the temperature had fallen to several degrees of frost, and this gave a freshness and vigor to the air which brightened the world for us amazingly.

We could walk dry-shod in the measure that we could walk at all.

Clark was rather stiff at the start, and I could make scarcely any progress alone, but Clark generously lent me a shoulder, and his arm was frequently around me at the street crossings.

All this was most naturally done.

The thought of deserting me because I had gone lame seemed never to occur to him.

He must have known that his own good chances were seriously lessened by his having me upon his hands, but he accepted this as though it were inevitable.

There was no mawkish sympathy in his manner; he was in for practical helpfulness only, and now and again he would withdraw his support, and, standing off, would watch me execute his command: “Now take a brace, partner, and let’s see you go it alone.

” At Van Buren Street we turned, to the Rock Island Railway station, and in the waiting-room we quenched our thirst as best we could at the drinking-fountain.

Many of the men had taken the direction of South Clark Street.

I asked Clark why.

“There’s barrel-houses down there,” he explained.

The word had come upon me repeatedly in the last day, with only a dim suggestion of its meaning, and so I owned to my ignorance.

“A barrel-house?

” said Clark.

“That’s a dive where they keep cheap whiskey on tap; you can get a pint for a nickel.

It’s about the size of the whiskey you want for the thirst you get in a station-house, I’m thinking,” he added.

And then more to himself than to me: “I’m damned if I don’t wish I had some now to wash that air out of my mouth.

” His face was very wry, and there was returning to it the expression of hopelessness which it had worn while we crouched for shelter in the doorway on the night before.

It cut you to the quick.

His light-blue eyes, which had drawn me from the first by the honest directness of their gaze, now began to lose their human, speaking quality and to take on the dumb, beseeching look of a hunted beast.

The bread and coffee and clean air had revived us both.

I dreaded a swift relapse, and so I urged a wash, in the hope of its bracing effect.

But where could we achieve this simple need?

Certainly not in the wash-room of the station, for we had trespassed dangerously far in drinking at the fountain, and the eye of more than one employee was already upon us.

There was no hotel into whose public lavatory we could pass unchallenged, and not so much upon Clark’s account as upon mine.

There remained the open lake; so we walked up Van Buren Street and across the Lake Park and the railway tracks to the edge of the outer harbor.

Here we knelt among the broken fragments of ice and bathed our faces and hands.

It was vigorous exercise to rub them dry before they chapped in the winter wind.

It warmed us, and the feeling of relative cleanness was enheartening.

And then I sat down and dipped up water in one hand and applied it, until I had a cold saturated cushion against the bruise on my leg.

This wrought wonderful relief until the wet cloth froze, and then it chafed the bruise badly for a time.

But I could walk alone and fairly well now.

We turned up Michigan Avenue and followed it to the river, discussing, as we went, a plan of action.

Clark was for going at once to the far North Side in search of employment at various iron-works and foundries there, of whose existence he had learned.

I longed for the means of early relief from the reviving pangs of hunger through some chance job which I hoped that we might obtain.

This was a new idea to Clark.

He was a raw recruit in the army of the unemployed.

That he might look for other work than that which was in the line of his trade had not yet presented itself to him as a possibility.

He shrank from it with the instinctive dislike of a conservative for a new way.

And all our early essays confirmed him in his aversion.

We went from door to door of the great wholesale business houses at the head of Michigan Avenue.

Large delivery trucks stood lined up along the curb on both sides, and there was the bustle across the pavement of much loading and unloading of wares.

Workmen in leather aprons were handling packed boxes with the swiftness and dexterity of long practice.

At half a score of houses we sought out an overseer or a superintendent and asked to be set to work; but, without a moment’s hesitation in a single case, we were told, with varying degrees of emphasis, that we were not needed, not even for some chance, exceptional demand.

It is difficult to describe the discouragement which results from such an experience.

All about you is the tumultuous industry of a great city.

You feel something of the splendid power of its ceaseless productivity; you guess at its vast consuming; and in the din of its noisy traffic you watch the swift shuttles which weave the varied fabric of its business.

Its complexities and interdependencies bear down upon you with an inspiring sense of the volume of human life spent in ministering to life.

Its multitudes throng you upon the streets, and you read in countless faces the story of unending struggle to keep abreast with pressing duty.

Work?

Everywhere about you there is work, stupendous, appalling, cumulative in its volume and intensity with the increasing momentum of a world-wide trade, which is driven by the natural forces of demand and supply and keenest competition.

Men everywhere are staggering under burdens too grievous to be borne.

And here are you idle, yet counting it the greatest boon if you might but add your strength to the mighty struggle.

Is there then no demand for labor?

There is most importunate, insatiable demand for all work of finer skilfulness, for all men who can assume responsibility and give new efficiency to productive forces, or direct them into channels for the development of new wealth.

But in the presence of this demand Clark and I stood asking hire for the potential physical energies of two hungry human bodies, and, standing so, we were but two units in a like multitude of unemployed.

When we reached the river I had difficulty in dissuading Clark from his confirmed resolve to pass on to the North Side in pursuit of his earlier plan.

He had no thought of leaving me behind.

He urged that a chance job was as probable along his route as any other.

But he consented at last to another hour of search in the immediate vicinity.

We were in South Water Street; we walked west until we had crossed State and had come to the corner of Dearborn Street.

Walking became increasingly difficult, for the pavements were piled high with boxes and barrels and crates full of all manner of fruits and vegetables, and wooden coops packed with live game and poultry.

A narrow passage remained between the piles.

Through this we picked our way, carefully avoiding empty boxes and hand-trucks and stray measures that lay strewn about.

On each side of the street buildings of brick or stone, fairly uniform in height, rose four-storied and many windowed, with the monotony of their straight lines relieved by the curves of arched windows, each bearing a protruding keystone.

Over the wide fronts of the shops sagged awnings in various stages of faded color and unrepair, their iron frames lying uncovered and unsightly against the fluted canvas.

Along both curbs were backed continuous rows of drays and trucks and market-wagons.

The two lines of horses stood blanketed in the cold, facing each other across a narrow opening down the stone-paved street, and more than anything else they resembled lines of picketed cavalry.

We soon felt the friction of the crowd as it steered its devious course along the littered pavement, brushing against groups of purchasers who stood examining sample wares, and against idlers leaning to the doorposts with hands in their trousers’ pockets, and through the cross currents of drivers and shopmen who busily took on or discharged the loads.

The very confusion and hurry of the scene, while they suggested the chance of work, were really an added embarrassment to our search.

More than under other circumstances we shrank from asking employment from men hard driven by the “instant need of things.

” And this instinctive feeling was fully justified in the course of the actual quest.

Of common hands there was an abundance, and ours, held out for sale, were of the nature of a provocation to men cumbered by complex care.

Occasionally we could not get access to an employer; and when we did, we sometimes received a civil “no,” but commonly an emphatic one in a vent of evil temper.

At one moment an old gentleman was looking up at us over the tops of his spectacles as we stood at the foot of his desk.

There was much shrewdness in his eye, and his face was deeply lined, but his speech revealed the frankness of a courteous nature.

“No, I’m sorry,” he was saying, “I’m sorry that I can give you nothing to do.

The fact is, I’ve got to lay off three men at the end of the week.

My business don’t warrant my keeping them.

I hope you’ll be more fortunate elsewhere.

” A minute later we were standing waiting for the attention of a square-shouldered, thick-necked dealer who was in angry dispute with a subordinate.

His face was still distorted when he turned upon us, and his dilating eyes sought mine with an expression of growing impatience.

“We are looking for a job, sir,” I began.

“Can you give us a chance to work?

” “No, I can’t, ---- you!

Out you go, now!

” And then to a man near the door: “---- your soul, Kelly, I’ve told you to keep these bums out of here.

If you let in another one I’ll fire you, as sure as hell.

” [Illustration: “OUT YOU GO, NOW.

”] The hour was nearly up, and there was apparently nothing for it but to start north in accordance with Clark’s plan and in hope of better fortune.

I felt as though I could not go.

I was fairly faint with hunger, and a curious light-headedness had possessed me.

The sights and sounds about us took on a strange unreality, and I could not rid myself of the feeling of moving and speaking in a dream.

Again and again I was conscious of a repetition of identical experience, recalling the same circumstances in some faintly remembered past, and even before I spoke at times, I had an eerie sense of having uttered the coming sentences before under precisely similar conditions.

The one fact to which consciousness held with unshaken certainty was the strong craving for food.

And this was not so much a positive pain, as it was a sickening, benumbing influence.

My hand would all but go out in reach for fruit that lay exposed about me, and the thought that the act would be wrong, and would get me into trouble, followed the impulse afar, and was forced into action as a checking conviction by a distinct effort of the will.

We turned into one shop more.

The pavement in front was heaped with crates packed with oranges, and bound around the centre and the ends with iron bands.

Three high they stood on end, and four and five in a row along the curb, while backed up against them were two empty trucks with slats sloping capaciously at the sides.

There was confusion within the shop.

A dealer and two drivers were swearing loudly, each on a line of independent grievance.

Two or three shopmen were bustling about in zealous execution of orders.

Men who may have been customers were waiting impatiently for attention, and clerks added to the confusion as with papers in hand they passed quickly in and out of offices at the rear.

It appeared the most unpromising place for us that we had entered, and we were prepared for a refusal more than commonly emphatic, when to our almost overwhelming surprise the dealer hailed us: “Say, you men, do you want a job?

Go out and load them oranges, and I’ll give you fifty cents apiece.

” We did not stagger nor clasp each other’s hands in an ecstasy of relief; we simply turned without a word, and hurrying to the street, we began to lift the heavy crates into the box of an empty truck.

Clark was the first to speak.

“Fifty cents, partner, fifty cents!

” he kept repeating in an awed undertone.

He seemed to be trying to get firm hold of the fact of our almost incredible good fortune, and then, in a voice that was thick with a heaving sob, he said: “We’ll feed, partner, we’ll feed!

” [Illustration: “WE’LL FEED, PARTNER, WE’LL FEED.

”] But we did not “feed” at once when the money was actually in our possession.

The first load had gone fairly well, for the certain prospect of food nerved us to such a degree that, weakened though we were, we scarcely felt the effort of loading, and we were quite unaware that our bare hands were being scratched by the sharp ends of iron bands about the boxes until we felt the flow of blood.

But before the second load was half on, our nerve began to fail us.

Each succeeding crate went on board with a greater effort.

And the task itself grew harder, as the tiers of boxes rose higher in the truck.

It seemed as though the driver would never be satisfied with the load; but at last he called a halt, and, mounting his seat, drove off in the direction in which the other truck had gone.

We were paid at once, Clark a half-dollar coin and I two silver quarters.

We held our money with the grip of drowning men upon a saving support.

We sat down upon a doorstep to rest.

We were panting hard, and the circles under Clark’s eyes had grown darker, and his thin bloodless lips were quivering as with cold.

But his spirits were rising, and his eyes grew brighter every moment, and his pale face, already flushed with exercise, glowed again with the pleasure of anticipating the sure breaking of our fast.

When we set off, Clark was in the full swing of a provident plan.

“There’s lots of saloons,” he said, “where you can get a free lunch with a glass of beer.

” And he began to point them out to me along our route.

Large signs in front competed for the drifting trade.

On one was painted a huge schooner brimming over with frothing beer, and it bore the legend: “The largest glass of beer for five cents in Chicago.

” Another sign claimed for its shop, “The best free lunch in the city,” and others told of hot sausages with every drink, or a certain number of oysters in any style, or hot stews at choice, and bread and cold meats and cheese in unstinted abundance.

All this so exactly met our needs.

And there were warmth and shelter and companionship within the saloons, and having drunk at the bar and eaten at the free-lunch counter, we should be free to sit at ease about the fire.

And how cheap it all was!

For fifteen cents, Clark was saying, we could get three fair meals a day, and even ten cents would save us from the actual pain of hunger.

There was no other chance that compared with this.

The utmost that five cents would buy in the cheapest eating-houses was a cup of coffee and two small rolls.

There were ten-cent meals to be had, but they were not the equals of a free lunch and a glass of beer.

To get their equivalent in a restaurant you must spend fifteen cents at least.

My objections were wholly unintelligible to Clark.

From these he would bring the argument back to the question of wise management, and there he had me.

Presently he lost his temper, and told me that I was a “damn fool,” and that I might go “to a restaurant, or to hell,” as I chose, but that for his part he was going in for a free lunch and a glass of beer.

But before we separated he was so far pacified that he agreed to meet me in the early evening in front of the shop where we had earned our money.

It was at the juncture of Dearborn and Madison Streets that we parted.

Not far from there I found a restaurant whose placards in the windows offered tempting dishes at astonishingly cheap rates.

“Roast beef and baked potato, fifteen cents,” was printed on the one that lured me most.

I walked inside and sat down at a small round table, spread with a cloth which was faultlessly clean.

A long line of such tables reached down the centre of the deep room in inviting whiteness, and was flanked on each side by a row of others, oblong in shape, pressed close in against the walls.

To a height of several feet above these tables the walls were wainscoted with mirrors, and the white ceiling was gay with paper festoons.

Customers were streaming in, for it was about noon.

Most of these were evidently men from neighboring business houses, but there were workmen, too, some of them in blue jeans; and the first fear that I felt at entering, the fear of having come to a place too respectable to accept me as a guest, vanished completely, and gave place to a feeling of security and comfort.

A corps of colored waiters were hurrying through the narrow passages between the tables, bearing aloft tin trays heaped with dishes; to the noisy clatter and hum of the diners, they added a babel of discordant sound as they shouted in unintelligible phrase their varying orders into the dim regions at the rear, whence answered a muffled echo to each call.

My order came in a deep dinner-plate, a slice of roast beef, generous and juicy, shading from brown to the rich, raw red of the centre that oozed with a strengthening flow.

With it was a large baked potato, piping hot, and when I broke it upon the table with a blow of my fist, the fragrant steam rose in a cloud to my face.

At the end of a fast of thirty-six hours, which had been relieved only by a few swallows of coffee and a little bread, I knew enough to eat slowly.

But I was unprepared for the difficulty which this precaution involved.

As when one swallows cautiously in quenching a consuming thirst, and checks by sheer force the muscles which would drink with choking draughts, so it was only by a sustained restraint that I ate carefully, in small morsels, until the brutish hunger was appeased.

And when all the beef and potato, and an amazing quantity of the bread, with which the table was abundantly supplied, were gone, I could not forego the expenditure of five cents more for a cup of coffee, by the aid of which another deep inroad upon the bread was soon accomplished.

At the desk where I paid the amount stamped upon a check which the waiter had left at my place, I inquired for the manager.

When I received his assurance that he could give me no work as a dishwasher, nor, in fact, in any capacity in his restaurant, and that he knew of no opening for me anywhere, I walked out into the streets once more and found my way to the public reading-room of the Young Men’s Christian Association.

There I looked through the advertising columns of the morning newspapers.

Of applications for positions there was an almost countless number, but of openings offered there were few, and not one of these was promising to a man whose only resource was unskilled labor.

Reading on somewhat aimlessly through the day’s news I presently fell asleep, and was soon awakened by a young secretary, who was shaking me vigorously by the shoulder.

“Wake up, my man, wake up!

” he was saying.

“You can’t sleep in here.

You must keep awake, or go out.

”