Читать книгу The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe онлайн

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One direction in which the Negro in the South has an advantage is in the matter of labour. One of the most pitiful things I saw in London, Liverpool, and other English cities was the groups of idle men standing about on the street corners, especially around the bar-rooms, because they were not able to get work.

One day, as I was going along one of the main avenues of the city, I noticed an unusually large crowd standing in front of a street organ which was drawn up at the side of the pavement. Pausing to see what there was about this organ that attracted so much attention and interest, I found that the man who owned this instrument was using it as a method of advertising his poverty.

All over the front of the organ were plastered papers and documents of various kinds. On one side there was a list of advertisements cut from the "Want" columns of the daily newspapers. Attached to this was a statement that these were some of the places that the man had visited the day before in search of work, which he was not able to find. On the other side of the organ were attached six or seven pawn tickets, with the statement that "these are some of the articles which my dear wife pawned to get food for our children." This was followed by a pitiful appeal for help. The pathetic thing about it was that the only persons who stopped to look at these exhibits besides myself were a group of hungry and disreputable-looking men who were evidently in just as great want as the man who ground the organ. I watched those men. After reading the signs they would look inquiringly at the other members of the group and then relapse into the same stolid silence which I had noticed so many times in the forlorn figures that filled the benches of the parks.