"Do you? How do you make it out?" "Because they're an utterly hopeless crowd! Look at 'em--poor devils--they look like a lot of Bowery bums!" "Yes--they look like a lot of bums. And they feed all the fires at sea." "Are they all like these?" I demanded. "No better dressed," he answered. "A million lousy brothers of Christ." "And you think you can build a new world _with them_?" "No--I think they can do it themselves." "Do you know what I think they'll do themselves? If they ever do win in any strike and get a raise in wages--they'll simply blow it in on drink!" Joe looked at me a moment. "They'll do so much more than drink," he said. "Come on," he added. "They're going aboard." They were forming in a long line now before the third-class gang-plank. As they went up with their packs on their shoulders, a man at the top gave each a shove and shouted out a number, which another official checked off in a book. The latter I learned was the chief engineer. He was a lean, powerful, ruddy-faced man with a plentiful store of profanity which he poured out in a torrent: "Come on! For Christ's sake! Do you want to freeze solid, you ---- human bunch of stiffs?" We came up the plank at the end of the line, and I showed him a letter which I had procured admitting us to the engine rooms. He turned us over promptly to one of his junior engineers, and we were soon climbing down oily ladders through the intricate parts of the engines, all polished, glistening, carefully cleaned. And then climbing down more ladders until we were, as I was told, within ten feet of the keel of the ship, we came into the stokers' quarters. And here nothing at all was carefully cleaned. The place was foul, its painted steel walls and floor and ceiling were heavily encrusted with dirt. The low chamber was crowded with rows of bunks, steel skeleton bunks three tiers high, the top tier just under the ceiling. In each was a thin, dirty mattress and blanket. In some of these men were already asleep, breathing hard, snoring and wheezing. Others were crowded around their bags intent on something I could not see. Many were smoking, the air was blue. Some were almost naked, and the smells of their bodies filled the place. It was already stifling. "Had enough?" asked our young guide, with a grin. "No," I said, with an answering superior smile. "We'll stay a while and get it all." And after a little more talk he left us. "How do you like our home?" asked Joe. "I'm here now," I said grimly. "Go ahead and show me. And try to believe that I want to be shown." "All right, here comes our breakfast." Two stokers were bringing in a huge boiler. They set it down on the dirty floor. It was full of a greasy, watery soup with a thick, yellow scum on the top, through which chunks of pork and potato bobbed up here and there.