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

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But there are marked exceptions to the prevailing type, men like Clark, sound and strong in flesh, and having about them the signs of habitual decency, and their faces stamped with the open frankness which comes of earning a living by honest work. Some of these are young immigrants, newly come, most evidently, and I picture their rude awakenings from golden dreams of a land of plenty.

Clark is fast asleep beside me, but I cannot sleep for gnawing hunger and the dull pain of lying bruised and sore upon the hard, paved floor.

There is sudden, nervous movement near me. Looking up I see a man seated straight, tugging frantically at his shirt, and swearing viciously the while in muffled tones. In a moment he has torn the garment off, and his crooked, bony fingers are passing swiftly over the shrivelled skin of his old, lean body in search of his tormentors, and his oaths come lisping from his toothless mouth. The men about him are ordering him, with deepening curses, to lie down and keep still.