Workers - An Experiment in Reality: The West — Chapter 3 - Part I - Finding Steady Work

No. -- BLUE ISLAND AVENUE, CHICAGO, ILL.

, December 22, 1891. That night when Clark and I reached the head of the staircase which descends to the basement of the station-house we found the way blocked by men.

We thought at first that a prisoner was being booked, but a second glance revealed the fact that the door of iron grating was wide open.

With his back against it stood an officer.

The lodgers were passing him in slow order, and, as they filed by, the policeman held each in sharp examination for a moment.

Soon I could see him clearly.

He stood, obstructing the exit from the stairs, a straight, massive figure well on to two hundred and fifty pounds.

A side-view was toward us, and I took delight in the clean-shaven face with the well-chiselled Grecian profile, the eye deep-set and widening to the upward lift of the lashes, and the dark, abundant hair rising in short, crisp curls from under the pressure of his cap-rim.

He was putting the men through a catechism respecting their nationalities, their homes and occupations, and their motives in coming to Chicago.

Beside him stood two men, the elder a man past middle life, of sober, dignified appearance, and with an air of philosophical interest in what he saw.

The younger was a callow youth, just grown to manhood, and he may have been the other’s son.

They were out “slumming,” evidently, and the officer had been detailed as their guide.

Their purpose may have been a good one, but the boy’s face, as I watched it, seemed to me to show plainly the marks of an unwholesome curiosity.

And certainly as they stood there in well-dressed, well-fed comfort, eying at leisure, as though it were exhibited for their diversion, this company of homeless, ragged, needful men, there was to my mind a deliberate insult in the attitude sharper than the sting of a blow in the face.

I thought at first that I might be alone in feeling this, until I heard a man behind me say, as the cause of the delay became clear to him: [Illustration: HE WAS PUTTING THE MEN THROUGH A CATECHISM RESPECTING THEIR NATIONALITIES, THEIR HOMES AND OCCUPATIONS, AND THEIR

MOTIVES IN COMING TO CHICAGO.

] “Who is them jays, and what business have they inspectin’ us?

” On the step below me was as good a vagrant type as the slowly moving line on the staircase disclosed.

I could not see his face, but I could guess at its effect from the dark, bristling, unkempt beard that sprouted in tangled, wiry masses from his cheeks and throat, and the heavy, cohering hair that lay long and thick about his ears and on his neck.

There was an unnatural corpulence about the figure, the reality of which was belied by the lean, sharp lines that appeared beneath a bulging collar and in the emaciated arms that were red, and raw, and almost bare below the elbows, where the ragged sleeves hung in fraying ribbons.

The obesity was purely artificial.

The tramp had on three flannel shirts, at least, besides several heavy waistcoats and two pairs of trousers and as many coats, with a possibility of there being three.

The outer garments were quaint mosaics of patches, positively ingenious in their interlacing adherence to one another and in their rude preservation of original outlines of dress.

From him came the pungent reek of bad whiskey and stale tobacco.

It was as though the man stood clothed in outward and visible signs of unseen realities, enveloped in the rigid habit of his own wrong-doing, draped in the mystery of inherited tendencies, and cloaked in the stern facts of a hard environment.

And yet, as beneath the filthy outer covering there was a human being, so under these veiling, unseen vestures was a man, a living soul created by the Almighty.

I could hear him muttering gruffly to himself as he slowly descended to his turn at the foot of the steps.

“Well, Weary, where are you from?

A hobo from Hoboville, I guess,” and the officer’s voice rang strong and clear up the staircase to the dim landing, where stood the waiting line of men.

The two slummers laughed aloud.

“From Maine,” said the tramp.

The voice came hoarse and thin and broken-winded from a throat eaten out by disease.

“Well, you’re a rare one, if you’re a Yankee.

But what brought you to Chicago?

” “Lookin’ for work at the World’s Fair.

” “You lie, you lazy loafer.

The last thing you’re looking for is work.

You all tell that World’s Fair lie.

There’s been as many of you in Chicago every winter for the last ten years as there is this winter.

” The man was stung.

“I’ve as good a right here as you,” he said.

“You have, have you!

” cried the officer in quick rejoinder, but with no loss of temper.

“Look at me, you filthy hobo,” he added, drawing himself to his full, imposing height.

“I’m a police officer.

I’ve held my job for eleven years, and got my promotions.

I’m earning eighty dollars a month, do you see?

Now go down there where you belong,” and he pointed imperiously to the far end of the corridor.

My turn came next.

“Here’s another whiskers,” announced the officer in explanation to his charges; “same kind, only younger and newer to the business.

” And then to me, “Where are you from?

” he said.

I replied with some inanity in mock German.

“Oh, he’s a Dutchman.

We get a few of them.

But they’re mostly older men, and kind of moody, and they tramp alone a good bit.

Can’t you talk English?

” I said something in very bad French.

“Oh, I guess he’s a Frenchy.

That’s very uncommon----” I interrupted his information with a line from Virgil, spoken with an inflection of inquiry.

“He may be a Dago, or a--ah----” he hesitated.

I broke in with a sentence in Greek.

“Or a Russian,” concluded the officer.

I thought that I could mystify him finally, and so I pronounced a verse from Genesis in Hebrew.

But he was equal to the emergence.

“I’ve got it,” he exclaimed, with a note of exultation; “he’s a Sheeny!

” And free to go I walked down the corridor, feeling that I had come rather badly out of that encounter.

None of us, I think, resented much the action of the officer.

The policemen understand us perfectly, and in a certain broad, human sense we know them for our friends.

I have been much impressed with this quality of natural _bonhomie_ in the relation of the police officers to the vagrant and criminal classes.

It seems to be the outcome of sturdy common sense and genuine knowledge and human sympathy.

It would be difficult, I fancy, seriously to deceive an average officer of good experience.

He may not know his man personally in every case, but he knows his type, and he takes his measure with admirable accuracy.

He is not far misled by either his virtue or his vice.

He knows him for a human being, even if he be a vagrant or a criminal, and he has come by practical experience to a fair acquaintance with human limitations in these spheres of life.

The sympathy of which I have spoken is conspicuously innocent of sentimentality.

It comes from a saner source, and is of a hardier fibre.

Unfortunately it lays open a way of corruption to corrupt men on the force, but it is the basis, too, of high practical efficiency in the difficult task of locating crime and keeping it within control.

And it has another value little suspected, perhaps.

I have met more than one workingman at work who owed his job to the friendly aid of a policeman, who had singled him out from the ranks of the unemployed as being worthy of his help.

And this sort of timely succor is bounded, I judge, only by the limits of opportunity.

Certainly I shall never forget the kindness of an officer who had evidently grown familiar with me on the streets, and who to my great surprise stopped me suddenly one day with the question: “Ain’t yous got a job yet?

” “No,” I said, as I stood looking up in deep admiration of his height and breadth and ruddy, wholesome face and generous Irish brogue.

“Well, that is hard luck,” he went on.

“There isn’t many jobs ever at this season of the year, but just yous come around this way now and again, and I’ll tell yous, if I hears of anything.

” That was only a day or two before I found work, and when I had a chance to tell him of my success, his pleasure seemed as genuine as my own.

* * * * * Sunday morning was all that Clark and I could wish.

To the pallor of the earliest dawn was added a soft, white muffling of snow.

It lay almost untracked over the filthy streets and upon the pavements, and in dainty cones it capped the fence-palings, and roofed in pure white the sheds and flat-cars in the railway station yard.

Clark and I walked rapidly across Wabash Avenue, then south to Twentieth Street, and then east again across Michigan and Indiana to Prairie Avenue.

Here we were in the midst of a wealthy residence quarter.

Most hopefully we wandered about in anxious waiting for some signs of life.

From the first house at which we could apply we were turned away with the assurance that there was a man on the place whose duties included the cleaning of the pavements, and that, therefore, our services were not needed.

We had expected this to be the case in the majority of instances; it was of the possible exception that we were in search.

Soon we began to fear that there were no exceptions.

Our spirits had fallen low under repeated refusals, when suddenly they rose with a bound, when we finally got a pavement to clean, and twenty-five cents each in payment.

The temptation to quit at once and get something to eat was strong, for the swallow of coffee and piece of bread at the station-house had not gone far toward satisfying an appetite which was of twenty-four hours’ growth.

But then in another hour or two all further chance of work like this would be gone, and so we stuck at it.

Our reward was almost instant.

Not only were we given a job at sweeping snow, and paid another quarter each for it, but we were asked whether we had breakfasted, and were invited to a meal in the kitchen.

I think that the cook thoroughly enjoyed feeding us, we did such ample justice to her fare.

After two large bowls of steaming porridge, we began on omelettes and beefsteak and crisp potatoes and fresh bread, drinking the while great quantities of coffee, not the flat, bitter, diluted wash of the cheap restaurants, but the hot, creamy, fragrant beverage which tones one for the day.

[Illustration: I THINK THAT THE COOK THOROUGHLY ENJOYED FEEDING US.

] We had little time to talk, and very selfishly I left our end of the conversation wholly to Clark.

The cook drew from him some of the facts of our position, and the further fact of our having been so long without food.

This made her very indignant, not at us, but at the existing order of things.

“There should be a law,” she said, emphatically, “a law to give a job to every decent man that’s out of work.

” Then, with the sweet facility of feminine remedy, “And another law,” she added, “to keep all them I-talians from comin’ in and takin’ the bread out of the mouths of honest people.

They ain’t no better than heathens anyway, and they do tell me that they’ll work for what a Christian dog wouldn’t live on.

Why, there’s me own cousin as come over from County Down a month ago last Tuesday, and he ain’t got a job yet, and I be obliged to support him, and all on account of them unclean I-talians.

” There seemed to be no end to our good luck that morning.

After a right royal breakfast we got still another belated pavement to clean, and when we had finished that our joint earnings made the sumptuous total of one dollar and fifty cents, and we were not hungry.

It was a delightful walk back to the familiar lodging-house, where we paid for a night’s lodging in advance, and so secured immediate access to the washing and cleaning facilities of the establishment.

When we set forth again Clark looked fairly trim.

His clothes were well brushed and his boots were clean.

He had been shaven, and his face glowed with healthful exercise and the effects of nourishing, sustaining food.

We had been in conversation on the subject of going to church.

Clark opposed it warmly; besides, he had another plan.

There were certain foremen whom he was bent on seeing in the unoccupied quiet of Sunday, in relation to the matter of a possible job.

“And I don’t take no stock in church, anyway,” he explained.

“Fellows like us ain’t expected there, and we ain’t wanted.

If you ain’t dressed in the style, you’re different from everybody else that’s there, and there ain’t no fun in that.

And if you do go, what do you hear?

Sometimes a preacher talks sense, and makes things reasonable to you, but most of them talks rot, that you don’t believe nor they either.

I’d sooner read Tom Paine than hear all the preachers in this town.

He talks to you straight, in a way you can understand.

” I pleaded my knowledge of a preacher who would talk to us as “straight” as Tom Paine, but to no purpose, for there remained the question of dress.

Then I urged our going to mass, where we should not be embarrassed by our singularity; but this plea met with no favor at all, and I was obliged to go alone to church, and did not see Clark again until we met late in the evening at the lodging-house.

It was snowing fast at the end of the service-hour, giving high promise of abundant work in the morning.

On the strength of it I ate a fifteen-cent dinner with a twofold feeling of satisfaction.

Then I began a diligent search for the place of meeting of the Socialists.

Sunday afternoon, I had learned, was their time of meeting.

A

knowledge of the place was wanting, but only because it had not occurred to me to look for an announcement of it in the newspapers of the day before.

And this was wholly indicative of my general frame of mind in the connection.

My preconceptions were strong.

I had vision of a bare, dimly lighted room in the far recess of an unfrequented building, a room reached by dusty stairs and long, dark corridors, closely guarded by sentries, whose duty was to demand the countersign from those who entered and to give warning of danger in an emergency, so that the inmates might escape by secret passages to the street.

I had made frequent inquiries of the men whom I met, and it was from one of these that I learned that the time was Sunday afternoon; but none of them knew the place nor seemed to take the smallest interest in the matter.

I thought that a policeman might be able to put me on the track of the meeting, if he chose, but then I feared that there were even chances that he would “run me in” as a revolutionary, upon hearing my request.

I concluded that if I should be so fortunate as to find the place, it would be by some happy chance; and that if I gained admission, it would be by a happier one, due largely to my rough appearance.

I pictured this rude hall thronged with men, grizzled, bearded men, with eyes aflame and hair dishevelled, listening in high excitement to leaders whose inflammatory speeches lashed them into fury against all established order.

Curiosity kindled to liveliest interest under the free play of imagination.

In my eagerness I grew bolder.

Repeatedly I stopped workingmen upon the street, and asked to be directed.

No one knew, until I chanced upon a man who had a vague suspicion that the Socialists met in a hall over a saloon somewhere in West Lake Street.