Workers - An Experiment in Reality: The West — Chapter 2 - Part II - Living by Odd Jobs
I went out.
It was easier to keep awake in the streets than in that warm room, and besides, I must not slacken the search for work.
By the time that I had fully recovered possession of my senses I found that an aimless walk had taken me near to the railway station, at whose fountain Clark and I had drunk in the morning.
A crowd of newly arrived passengers was issuing into Van Buren Street, many of them carrying hand-luggage.
With a flash of association there came to my mind the recollection of the boys and men who follow you persistently on Cortlandt Street between the Pennsylvania station and the elevated railway, with importunate offers to carry your bag for a dime.
I
wondered that this industry had not occurred to me before as a resource in my present need.
In a moment I was plying it with high hope of success, but in the next I stood agape at a fierce onslaught of street Arabs and men.
One or two had picked up stones with which they menaced me.
All of them were shouting oaths and violent abuse, and one half-grown boy, who was the first to reach me, held a clenched fist to my face, as he screamed hoarsely profane threats, and his keen dark eyes blazed with anger, and his lean face worked convulsively in the strength of violent passion.
It appeared that I had trespassed upon a field which was pre-empted by a “ring” well-organized for its possession and cultivation, and for the further purpose of excluding competition.
[Illustration: ALL OF THEM WERE SHOUTING OATHS AND VIOLENT ABUSE.
] I fell back to a safe distance.
On the opposite side of the street I saw a gentleman carrying a heavy portmanteau.
He was well past the beat of the organized ring about the station.
In an instant I was beside him, and was offering to carry his load.
He seemed disinclined to pay any heed at first, but he stopped in a moment with the remark: “I’ll give you a quarter to carry this bag to my hotel.
” I assented joyfully.
I swung the bag to my shoulder, and passed on ahead, while the traveller walked close behind me in the crowd, and directed me to his hotel in Wabash Avenue, where, together with what I already had, I was soon fifty-five cents to the good.
That afternoon yielded nothing more either in prospect of a steady job or in the fruit of chance employment, and at dusk I stood again in South Water Street anxiously awaiting Clark’s return.
It was dark when he came at last, and as he approached me in the fierce light of the electric arc which gleamed from the top of the high iron post near by, I could see that he was paler and more careworn, and deeply dejected.
We sat down for a few moments upon a doorstep.
The street was nearly deserted, and the lights shone dismally through its blackened length.
Clark began to tell me of his afternoon.
No chance of work had been revealed beyond the vague suggestion of one boss that he might need an extra man in a week or two.
Moreover Clark had found the shops so far away that he had been obliged, both in his going and return, to take a Lincoln Avenue cable-car, and so was out a fruitless ten cents in fare.
He said very little beyond the bare statement of his afternoon’s experience.
He was sitting with his elbows resting on his knees, with his hands clasped, and his flaxen head bowed almost to his arms.
I knew that he was struggling with thoughts and feelings which he could not analyze, nor in the least express, and I waited in silence beside him.
The whole experience was new to him.
He had been out of work before, but he had had a home, and in its shelter he could tide over the depression which had cost him his job.
Now his home was gone, and he was adrift without support.
But he was young and strong and accustomed to work, and all that he sought was a chance to win his way.
And yet his very struggles for a footing seemed to sink him into deeper difficulty.
The conditions which he was forced to face seemed to conspire against the possibility of his success.
It was the feeling inspired by this seeming truth, a dim, dull feeling vaguely realized, yet awful, that bore hard upon him, and that loomed portentous as with remorseless fate.
He was struggling with it in an agony of helpless discouragement, and presently he found utterance for it in concrete form.
“One boss I struck for a job, I thought he was going to give it to me sure,” he said.
“He asked me where I’d worked before, and why I’d quit, and how long I’d been at the trade.
And just then I felt something crawling on my neck.
It was a crumb, ---- it!
The boss seen it, too.
He got mad, ---- him!
and he chewed a rag, and he said if he had twenty jobs, he wouldn’t give one to a lousy hobo like me.
” Clark was growing increasingly vehement in his recital.
He rose to his feet and bent over me, while the hot words came hissing between his teeth: “I ain’t never been like this in my life before, and, great God Almighty!
I’d be clean if I could!
” After a moment he added, in a hard, clear tone: “We’ve got some money, partner, let’s go and get a drink.
” My extra quarter flashed into my mind as a hopeful resource.
I held out the two quarters and a nickel on the palm of my hand where the street light would strike them.
I told Clark of my windfall, and of the possible chance of many another such to help us out in the future.
“I earned this in ten minutes,” I said, holding out a quarter, “and I know where twenty cents of it will buy us each a hot stew and all the bread that we can eat.
And then I’ve found a lodging-house in South Clark Street where we can each get a wash and a fairly decent bed in good air for fifteen cents, and we’ll have enough left to keep us in food to-morrow.
” Clark hesitated.
I enlarged on the attractiveness of the restaurant and the comfort of eating at leisure at one of its clean tables, and the long, unbroken rest that we should have at the lodgings.
Clark was tired to the bone, and he yielded.
It was my turn now to give him a shoulder as we walked to our evening meal.
We were soon seated opposite each other at one of the side tables of the restaurant.
The lights were reproduced in myriad reflections in the mirrors, and we seemed to be sitting near the centre of a vast dining-hall with multitudes at its countless tables and its farther portions fading in the perspective of dim distance.
The Irish stew and bread were indescribably good, and in the company of other diners we felt that we were among our fellow-men and of them, and we were free for the time from the torment of that haunting isolation which keeps one unspeakably lonely even in the thronging crowd.
Light-hearted and full of hope again we walked to the lodging-house, and after a wash we were soon fast asleep, each on a rough cot in a wooden closet, the electric lights streaming in upon us through the wire netting which was spread over the tops of long lines of such sleeping booths, that stood separated by thin board partitions like the bath-houses at the sea.
Friday and Saturday came and passed with the same vain search for work, and with varying fortune in odd jobs.
We took separate routes through the day, but always agreed at parting upon an hour and place of meeting.
The Young Men’s Christian Association rooms became our rendezvous.
When we met there on Friday evening I had a quarter and Clark was high-spirited and opulent with forty-five cents to his credit.
He was full of his good fortune.
In the middle of the forenoon he had chanced upon the job of shifting coal in the cellar of a private house.
The work having been finished he was allowed to wash himself in the kitchen with an abundance of hot water and soap and the luxury of a towel.
And then he sat down at the kitchen-table to a dinner of hot turkey and cranberry-sauce, and any number of vegetables, and all the bread and coffee he wanted, and finally a towering saucer of plum-pudding.
Fifty cents was added to the dinner in payment for his work, and, as he had had a dime left in his pocket after breakfast, he did not hesitate at an expenditure of fifteen cents in car-fare to facilitate his search for work.
My quarter had come, as on the day before, by way of a porter’s service--only this time from a woman.
I caught sight of her as she was crossing the Lake Front from the station of the Illinois Central Railroad at the head of Randolph Street.
Under her left arm were parcels of various shapes and sizes, and with some apparent effort she carried a bag in her right hand.
The parcels were troublesome, for now and again she was obliged to rest the bag upon the pavement until she had adjusted her arm to a surer hold upon them.
She was a woman nearing middle life, well dressed in warm, comfortable, winter garments which bore the general marks of the prevailing mode.
So completely had the present way of living possessed me that I fear that my first impulse at sight of her was born of the hope of a porter’s fee and not of the thought of helpfulness.
But I grew more interested as I neared her, and increasingly embarrassed.
There was a touch of beautiful coloring in her round, full face, and about the mouth was an expression of rare sweetness, while her dark-blue eyes looked out through gold-rimmed spectacles with preternatural seriousness.
But my eye was drawn most by the hair that appeared beneath her bonnet; a heavy mass it was, and tawny red like that of Titian’s “Magdalene” in the Pitti.
She might have been a shopkeeper’s wife come to the city from the suburbs or from some provincial village, and she was nervous in the noisy atmosphere of the unfamiliar.
I had not yet offered my services to a woman in this new capacity of street porter, and I found myself puzzled as to how I should approach her.
But the actual situation solved the difficulty, for when we were but a few steps apart, her bundles fell again into a state of irritating insecurity under her arm and she was again obliged to adjust them.
Instantly I was beside her, bowing, hat in hand: “I beg your pardon, madam; won’t you let me help you?
” She drew back and looked at me perplexed, and I could see the gathering alarm in her wide, innocent, serious eyes.
[Illustration: SHE DREW BACK AND LOOKED AT ME PERPLEXED.
] “Oh, no, thanks!
” she said, and I knew that all that she had ever heard of bunco-steerers and of the wily crafts of the town was mingling in terrifying confusion in her mind with thoughts of possible escape.
My distress was as great as her own.
I had forgotten for the moment how dismaying to a woman must be an unexpected offer of service from a sudden apparition of full grown, masculine, street poverty.
I felt guilty as though I had wantonly frightened a child.
A parcel had fallen to the ground.
I picked it up, and returned it to her with an apology most spontaneous and sincere.
But as I turned away in haste to escape from the embarrassment of the situation, I found myself checked to my great surprise by a timid question: “Perhaps you can tell me the shortest way to number -- La Salle Street?
” she said.
My hat was off at once.
“It will give me great pleasure to show you the way,” I replied, and not waiting for a refusal, I set off with, “Won’t you follow me, pray?
” over my shoulder.
At the curb of the first crossing I waited for her.
“Keep close to me,” I said, “and I’ll see you safe across the street.
” But I ignored the parcels, which were once more awry.
On the opposite pavement she stopped.
“Would you mind holding my bag,” she asked, “while I get a better grip on these bundles?
” I accepted the bag with an assurance of the pleasure that it gave me.
It was soon followed by a parcel, the largest and most unwieldy of the lot.
She finished adjusting the others, and then extended her free hand for the remaining parcel.
“We’ll carry this between us,” I said, “and I’ll walk with you to the place.
” Without a word of demur she took firm hold of the stout twine with which the parcel was tied, and thus linked we set off together down Randolph Street to La Salle.
Conversation was nearly impossible, for we were edging our way for the most part along crowded pavements.
When we stood for a few moments at a crossing, waiting for a check in the tide of traffic, she confided to me that she had come to Chicago from “----ville” to see a lawyer.
“You are often in the city,” I suggested, delighted to talk on the pleasant, easy terms which were springing up between us.
“Oh, no!
I ain’t,” she said, and then she was innocently superior to the compliment implied in my feigned surprise, and she began to question me about myself.
“What do you do for a living, young man?
” “I am out of work, and I am looking for a job,” I said, evasively.
“What is your line of work?
” she continued; for the bucolic mind was bent on a sure footing from which to launch out into further inquiry.
“I shall be glad of any work that I can get,” I said.
“Any work at all,” I reiterated, thinking that she might put me in the way of a job.
“Where do you live when you’re to home?
” and the question indicated a new tack in the quest for certitude.
“I came out here from the East” I answered; “I have no home here.
” “I guess you ain’t been doing just right, or else you wouldn’t be ashamed to tell,” she said, while a graver look came into her sober eyes.
The situation was so keenly delightful that I lacked the moral strength to do aught but prolong it.
“Ah, madam, if you but knew!
” I said, and I fear that my tone conveyed to her a tacit confession of deep depravity.
We had reached the required number in La Salle Street.
I led the way to the elevator, and found the door of the lawyer’s office.
The woman stood for a few moments in the passage; I was evidently on her conscience.
“Haven’t you got any family or friends?
” she continued, in a voice tender with sympathy.
“I had both,” I replied.
“Then, young man, you take my advice, and just go back to your family, and tell them you’re sorry that you done wrong, and you mean to do better.
They’ll be good to you and help you.
” Her words were swift with the energy of conviction.
“I am sure that you are right,” I agreed.
And now a well-filled open purse was in her hand, and I saw her fingers hesitating among some loose coins.
Presently she held out a quarter.
“You’ve been real nice to me,” she said, “and I want to ask you not to make a wrong use of this money.
You’ll not buy liquor with it, will you?
” “Indeed I will not,” I assured her.
“I have little temptation to do that, for I can quench my thirst for nothing; it is food that I find it hard to get.
And, madam,” I continued, “I am deeply grateful to you for your good advice.
” She smiled upon me, her pretty mouth and dimpled cheeks and dark blue eyes all playing their part in the friendly salutation.
“You will go back to your friends, won’t you?
” she said, persuasively.
“I will indeed,” I replied.
“Already I look forward to that with keenest pleasure.
” Then richer by a quarter and all aglow with the sense of human sympathy I returned to the streets, and to the exhausting, dreary round of place-hunting.
That this in itself should be such hard work is largely due, I fancy, to the double strain, both on your strength and on your sensibilities.
Certainly it is strangely enervating.
Even when you are not weakened by the want of food, you find yourself at the far end of a fruitless search worn out beyond the exhaustion of a hard day’s work.
And then the actual ground covered by your most persistent effort is always so sadly disappointing.
You may begin the day’s hunt rested and fed and full of energy and resolve; you may have planned the search with care, taking pains to find out the various forms of unskilled labor which are employed within the chosen area; with utmost regard to systematic, time-saving expenditure of energy, you may go carefully over the ground, leaving no stone unturned; and yet, at the day’s end, you have not covered half the area of your careful plan, and your whole body aches with weariness, and your heart is heavy and sore within you.
Nor does the task grow easier with long practice.
You acquire a certain facility in search; you come, by practical acquaintance, to some knowledge of the ins and outs of the labor market; but you must begin each day’s quest with a greater draft upon your courage and resolution.
For the actual barriers grow greater, as the outward marks of your mode of life become clearer upon you, and you feel yourself borne upon a tide that you cannot stem, out from the haven of a man’s work, where you would be, to the barren wastes, where drift to certain wreck the lives of the destitute idle who have lost all hold upon a “sure intent.
”
