Читать книгу The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West онлайн

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For two hours or more I go from one contractor to another, among the new buildings, asking work. The interviews are short and decisive. The typical boss is he who is moving anxious-eyed among his men with attention fixed upon some detail. He hears without heeding my request, and he shouts an order before he turns to me with an imperative “No, I don’t want you!” and sometimes an added curse.

“I guess you are the fiftieth man that has asked me for a job to-day,” said one boss, more communicative than the others. “I’m sorry for you poor devils,” he added, with a searching look into my face, “but there’s too many of you.”

My walk has carried me now through the coming Midway Plaisance and past the grounds of the new Chicago University to the outskirts of a park. I enter there with a feeling of relief, for I am soon out of the atmosphere of infinite employment where there is no work for me. Here there are open lawns, with snow crystals clinging to the tender turf, and trees of bewildering variety whose boughs are outstretched in graceful benediction over winding walks and drives and the curving, mossy banks of lakes.