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
The child that he is came comically to the surface last night, with no
least regard for the newly found dignity of manhood. Tom shares one of
the beds in my room, and in the middle of the night he came bounding
to the floor in a nightmare, and running to the door began pounding
it with both hands, and screaming, "Papa! Papa!" like a child in a
paroxysm of fear. He soon woke himself, and then he slunk into bed and
was surly with us as we crowded about him, eager to know the cause of
this violent awaking.
Jerry and Pete and Jim and Tom Wilson and I are the boarders. Wilson's
is the only surname that I know. Surnames are little in use on this
level of society; they smack of a certain formality like that which
attaches to Sunday clothes. We were all sitting on the porch after
supper on my first evening, and I knew that the men were taking my
measure. Jerry broke the silence with an abrupt inquiry after my name.
I responded with my surname. Jerry took his pipe from his mouth, and
turned to me with some warmth: "That's not what I want to know. What's
your first name? What's a man to call you?" "Oh, call me John," I said,
with sudden inspiration, and I have passed as "John" accordingly.
Wilson and I worked together at unskilled labor, and we have a bed in
common; and it was during a night of fearful heat, when neither of us
could sleep, that Wilson, in a burst of confidence, told me his full
name.
I had noticed him as a new-comer on the works on Wednesday morning.
He accepted the job with alacrity, and, in spite of evident physical
weakness, he went to work with feverish energy. At noon hour we shared
a dinner, and he told me that he had slept in the open for three nights
running, and had had nothing to eat since the previous noon. I referred
him to Mrs. Flaherty, and at supper I found him at a place at her
table.
It was that night that he gave me his confidence. Two years ago he
came to America from the north of Ireland. From the first he had
found it hard to get work, and he had never kept a job long. This was
chiefly due, he said, to his having been brought up to the work in the
linen-mills, and to the difficulty that he found in adapting himself to
any other. And now his narrative suddenly glowed with active personal
interest, for, with each succeeding sentence about his apprenticeship
in Lurgan, there rose into clearer memory visions of a charming
fortnight once spent at the home of the owners of the mill.
I have set for myself to-day the task of describing the past week of
actual service in the ranks of the industrial army. My pen runs wide
of the subject, and I have to force it to the retrospect. There were
five working-days of nine hours and a quarter each, less the "called
time" eaten out by the rain. Never was there clearer proof of the
pure relativity of time measured by an artificial standard. Hours had
no meaning; there were simply ages of physical torture, and short
intervals when the physical reaction was an ecstasy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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