"Broke," The Man Without the Dime

by Edwin A. Brown

“What is the pay?” I asked.

“A dollar and seventy-five cents a day, and you board yourself.”

Those Italian workmen were walking several miles a day to and from work for that wage. I heard among them numerous complaints. I wondered why. In the land of the Comorra, on the drive from Sorrento to Pompeii, I had seen these same men in harness, hitched to wagons, hauling loads of stone like beasts of burden.

MUNICIPAL Lodging House, New York City
Fumigating Chambers—Loading up

MUNICIPAL Lodging House, New York City
Fumigating Chambers—Sealed up

Someone told me if I wanted farm work I must travel further back in the country, which I did. I was not successful in finding it until the morning of the second day. Just over a stone wall I saw five men at work picking cucumbers for pickles. A little way off stood a very large, beautiful farm house. I was right when I drew the conclusion that the owner was a wealthy old farmer. He was holding his farm at a fabulous sum, believing he would receive it from a certain land owner who would eventually buy at any price. Leaping the wall I confronted the farmer, who needed me exceedingly at one dollar a day and board,—I supposed for not more than ten hours’ work, but asked no questions. I soon discovered that beside the old man, my field companions were the old man’s son and their hired men. No one spoke. Noiselessly and silently we worked, carrying the pickles in baskets on our shoulders, as fast as we gathered them, into a shed, where we emptied them into barrels. It rained at intervals all day, but that made no difference. We worked on. The mud and wet ground soaked our shoes. The rough basket, in constant contact with my shoulder, wore a hole through my jumper, which was a serious consideration when I reflected on my day’s pay.

At noon we were called to dinner. After standing what seemed an interminable time to a hungry man who for half a day had picked cucumbers out on the wet ground, beneath dripping trees, we were allowed to go in to dinner. In a rough outer room there was portioned out to each of the four hired men a bowl of tea, a tin plate containing vegetables and a small piece of meat. We were fed, about as the dog was fed, except that we sat at a table. Not one of my three fellow-workers had yet spoken to me. Turning to the one on my right I smiled and made some off-hand remark about the tough meat, which just at that moment he seemed to be struggling with. He smiled back but made no reply. I looked across the table at the slim, black eyed, busy fellow opposite me and made some non-consequential remark. He grinned with a little more accent than my right hand man. I then spoke to the man on my left, who was an old man of three score years and ten. He had his face very close to his plate and did not raise his head. I then discovered that one of the men was a Hun, the other a Pole. Neither could speak or understand my language, and the old man, a Dutchman, was stone deaf. This was about the most convivial dinner party I had ever attended. The afternoon was about as jovial as the dinner, and was augmented by more showers and a big lot of pickles. Did you ever pick pickles? If not, don’t do it, at least not for one dollar a day, unless you must. How your back aches from continual stooping! Your fingers, black, bruised, and sore from the tiny, prickly cucumber points, drive a fellow to saying things he would not dare to say before his dad.