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

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The whole experience was new to him. He had been out of work before, but he had had a home, and in its shelter he could tide over the depression which had cost him his job. Now his home was gone, and he was adrift without support. But he was young and strong and accustomed to work, and all that he sought was a chance to win his way. And yet his very struggles for a footing seemed to sink him into deeper difficulty. The conditions which he was forced to face seemed to conspire against the possibility of his success.

It was the feeling inspired by this seeming truth, a dim, dull feeling vaguely realized, yet awful, that bore hard upon him, and that loomed portentous as with remorseless fate. He was struggling with it in an agony of helpless discouragement, and presently he found utterance for it in concrete form.

“One boss I struck for a job, I thought he was going to give it to me sure,” he said. “He asked me where I’d worked before, and why I’d quit, and how long I’d been at the trade. And just then I felt something crawling on my neck. It was a crumb, —— it! The boss seen it, too. He got mad, —— him! and he chewed a rag, and he said if he had twenty jobs, he wouldn’t give one to a lousy hobo like me.” Clark was growing increasingly vehement in his recital. He rose to his feet and bent over me, while the hot words came hissing between his teeth: