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

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When living is a daily struggle with the problems of what you shall eat and what you shall drink, and wherewithal you shall be clothed, you take no anxious thought for the morrow, quite content to let the morrow take thought for the things of itself, for sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Your heart will leap with hope at any brightening of your lot, and will sink in deep despair when the way grows dark. The road of your salvation is by the strait gate and the narrow way of courage and persistent effort and provident foresight, and whence are these to come to you whose courage is born of warmth and a square meal, and whose despair comes with returning hunger? A world all bright with hope can be had on the terms of heat and food, and the sense of these can be induced for a nickel in a “barrel-house.”

When Clark and I awakened in the early morning, after our first night in the station, the dull gray dawn was dimming the gas, and in the lurid light we could see a writhing movement in the prostrate coiling mass of reeking humanity about us. We had lost the feeling of hunger, but a feverish thirst was burning to the roots of our tongues. We could scarcely move for the pain of sore and stiffened muscles, and I thought at first that my right leg was paralyzed from the night watchman’s kick. Only a few hours before, we had entered the station-house from the streets in eager willingness for any escape from their cold exposure, and now with intensified desire we longed for the outer air at any cost of hardship.