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

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“Get out of this, then, you d—— hobo, or I’ll put you out!”

At the gate I stand my ground in the right of a citizen and explain that I am looking for work, and am hopeful of a job from one of the bosses.

“This ain’t no time to see a boss,” is his retort; “they’re all busy. If we let you fellows in here we’d be lousy with hoboes in an hour. Come at seven in the morning, if you like, and take your chances with the others. Only my private tip to you is that you ain’t got no chance, not yet.”

Not far away there are many new buildings going up, huge, unlovely shells of brick that even at this stage tell plainly their struggles with the purely utilitarian problem of a maximum of room accommodation at a minimum of cost. I walk toward the nearest one, pondering, the while, the meaning of the word hobo, new to me, and having an uncomfortable feeling that, for the first time, I have been taken, not for an unemployed laborer in honest search of work, but for one of the professionally idle.

It has begun to rain, a dreary, sopping drizzle, half mist, half melting snow, heavy with the soot of the upper air, and it clings tenaciously, until my threadbare outer coat is twice its normal weight, and my leaking boots pump the slimy pavement water at every step.