The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The WestWyckoff, Walter A. (Walter Augustus)
History
The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West
Wyckoff, Walter A. (Walter Augustus)
Unemployed -- United States; Working class -- United States
With utmost patience and care he practised upon the pictures.
Difficulties in the process arose against which he had not been warned.
He went for further instructions and was given them willingly. After
nearly three days of almost constant industry he finished the six
photographs. These were to yield him a dollar and a half, and he took
them with a sense of achievement to the office. His employer examined
them and good-naturedly pointed out certain defects which he was asked
to remedy. The remedy seemed simple, but he saw at a glance that, in
reality, it would require his undoing practically all his work and
performing it over again, at a great risk of ruining the photographs in
the attempt.
He thought that he saw an escape from that, so he proposed to his
employer that the alterations should be made at the establishment;
that he himself should be paid nothing for the first work, but that
he should be given a second lot of pictures to color. The man agreed
instantly, and handed to him a fresh package containing half a dozen
photographs. These he carried back to his room. When he undid the
wrapper he found that he had been given a job which would require at
least a week to finish. Each photograph was unlike the others. Besides
one or two more or less difficult human figures in each, there were
elaborate backgrounds of draperies and rustic benches and potted
plants. He took the package back and asked for something simpler--more
within his power as a beginner. His employer explained to him
cheerfully that he had nothing else just then, but that he was sure of
easier work for him by the time that he had finished this.
The poor fellow walked out into the street knowing that he had been
swindled out of three dollars and three days’ hard work, and that
penniless now, he must take up the search again, and that there was no
redress for him.
Several times after this I saw him and I pressed upon him each time
the plan of returning to his former home in northern Indiana, or
striking out anywhere into the open country, where his intelligence and
his former experience would stand him in good stead, and where he would
probably not have to look long for a job. This was keenly distasteful
to him, for it would be a tacit acknowledgment of defeat, and the man
was not without courage and pluck. I met him last one early morning
after his first night as a lodger in a station-house. His eyes were
starting from his head, and he wore the wild, hunted look which I had
watched with alarm in Clark. He would scarcely stop to talk. He was off
for the open country and his former home.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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