The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The EastWyckoff, Walter A. (Walter Augustus)
History
The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The East
Wyckoff, Walter A. (Walter Augustus)
Unemployed -- United States; Working class -- United States
But the morning brought a glorious day, clear and much warmer than
Saturday; and after a late breakfast (seven o'clock) I took a book into
the forest, found a comfortable seat, and read until nightfall, with
time enough for dinner taken out.
The men scattered widely soon after breakfast. Many visited neighboring
camps, or went shooting; some walked to English Centre; but it was a
perfectly sober crew that reassembled at the supper-table, and a much
cleaner-looking set than on the night before; for after breakfast, for
two hours or more, Fred the Barber had thriftily plied his trade.
We all went early to bed. The men hailed the day's end as bringing
welcome relief in release from intolerable restraint. When it grew
too dark to read, and I had returned to the cabin, I found in the
lobby several of the men who had loafed about the camp all day. They
were in vicious humor. They fretted like children long shut in by the
rain. They could not sit still in comfort, and their restlessness grew
upon them as they waited for supper, and the movement of time was slow
torture; and so they swore at one another and at the other men who were
returning to the camp, and who seemed in but little better humor than
themselves.
CHAPTER VII
IN A LOGGING CAMP (_Concluded_)
I slept soundly that night, and was awakened in the morning by the
mad clatter of an alarm-clock. It was about four o'clock. I could
hear Fitz-Adams getting up in the little chamber which serves him as
a sleeping-room and an office. He went below, and soon had the fires
roaring fiercely in the kitchen and lobby; and I could hear him call
to the women to get up and get breakfast. Next he appeared in the
loft, and aroused the teamsters. In an incredibly short time they were
dressed, and had lit their lanterns, and were gone to the stable to
feed and tend their horses.
I got up with them, and was nearly dressed, when the boss reappeared
in the loft. He walked down between the rows of beds, laying heavy
hands here and there upon sleeping figures, and raising his voice to
the call: "Come, roll out of this, you damn ---- ---- ----!" There was
no ill-temper in his manner or tone; it was simply his habitual way of
rousing the crew.
I was first at the run, first at the towels and comb, and was sitting
in warm comfort behind the stove when the other men came shambling from
the loft, their eyes blinking in the sudden light of the lobby.
We had beefsteak and potatoes and bread and coffee for breakfast. As
soon as he had finished his meal, I went up to the boss to remind him
of my existence, for he had in no way noticed me since Saturday night.
"You'll help the teamsters load bark, Buddy. Have you got any gloves?"
"No," I said.
"Then come this way." We went together to the office, and he spread
before me a number of new pairs of heavy skin gloves.
"I don't know which will be best suited to the work that you want me to
do," I said. "Won't you select a pair for me?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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