The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The East

by Walter A. Wyckoff

At last all the carts were loaded and driven away, and until their return, some of us were set at assorting the débris—throwing the splintered laths and bricks and fragments of stone and plaster into separate heaps. The work compelled a stooping posture, and the pain of lacerated fingers was as nothing compared with the agony of muscles cramped and forced to unaccustomed use.

A business-like young fellow, with the air of a clerk, now began to move among the men, and they showed the keenest interest in his approach. I heard them speak of him as the "timekeeper," but I had no knowledge of such a functionary, and I wondered whether he had any business with me. He hailed me with a brisk "What is your number?" I looked at him in surprise. "He's a new hand," shouted the boss from his elevation. "What's your name?" asked the timekeeper, as he turned a page in his book. I told him, and when he had written it he drew from his pocket a brass disk, upon which was stamped the number six, and this he told me to wear, suspended by its string, and to show it to him as often as he made his rounds.

The cartmen had reappeared and received their loads, and had again driven off, in long procession, in the direction of Highland Falls. We went back to the varied torture of assorting. But the pain was not purely physical. The work was too mechanical to require close attention, and yet too exhausting to admit of mental effort. I did not know how to prevent my mind from preying upon itself.

At last I hit upon a plan which appealed to me. I simply went back in imagination to the familiar country-seat, and followed the morning through a likely course. We met at breakfast, and complained of the discomfort of the sultry day as we discussed our plans, and then we walked over the lawn to the pier. Two cruising sloops, that had waited in the hope of a freshening breeze, now weighed anchor, and under main-sail and top-sail and jib drifted slowly out of the harbor. We watched them in idle curiosity, wondering at the distinctness with which the conversation of the yachtsmen came back to us across the oily placidity of still water, until they seemed almost half way to the spindle, and then we agreed upon a morning ride. We telephoned to the stables, and before we were ready the horses stood restless under the porte-cochère. Step by step I followed our progress along the road that skirts the inlet, and across the crumbling bridge on the turnpike, and under the great, drooping elms which line the village-street in Fairfield, and up the long ascent of the Greenfield Hill to the old church, and then home by the "back road." The dogs came running at us from the stables with short, sharp barks of welcome as we cantered past, and we called to them by name. As we turned by the reservoir, we could see a groom running down the path in order to reach the house before us. Hot from the ride, we passed through the dim mystery of the hall and billiard-room and den, and out upon the veranda, where a breath of air was stirring, and the fountain played softly in its bed of vines and flowers. Louis had returned from market. Our letters lay in order on the settle, and near them, neatly folded, were the morning papers. And now Louis's approach was heralded by the tinkling of ice against the glass of bumpers of cooling drinks, and his bow was accompanied with a polite reminder that luncheon would be served in half an hour.

I had been working with all my strength. Now I looked up at the boss in some hope of a sign of the noon hour. There was none. Painfully I went back to the work. Again I tried to find diversion in this new device. Slowly, with double the needed time for each event, I followed the morning through another imaginary series. Now I was sure that the boss had made a mistake and had lost track of the time, and was working us far into the afternoon. The clouds had thickened, and the growing darkness I was certain was the coming night. Great drops of rain began to fall, but the men paid them no heed. Soon the drops quickened to a shower, and still the men worked on. The moisture from within and without had made us wringing wet when the boss ordered us to quit. We bolted for our coats and dinner-pails, and then huddled in the shelter of the still-standing walls of the ruin. Through one of the great doorways I caught sight of the tower of a neighboring building with a clock in it. It was twenty minutes to nine! In all that eternity since we began to load the first cart, we had been working one hour and forty minutes, and had each earned about twenty-nine cents.

The rain cost us an hour of working-time, and then we went back, and found some relief from the earlier discomfort in the saturation which had thoroughly settled the dust.

In another hour, with no freshening of the air, the clouds faded out of the sky. The sun shone full upon us, and there arose from the heaps of ruin a mist heavy with the smell of damp plaster. But I had my "second wind" at last, and I worked now with the feeling of some reserve of physical strength. It was with surprise that I heard the loud voice of the head boss in a shout of "Time's up!" and almost before I knew what had happened the men were seated on the ground, in the shadows of the walls, eating their dinners.

I opened mine with much curiosity. There were two huge sandwiches, with slices of corned beef between the bread, and a bit of cheese and a piece of apple-pie, very damp and oozing. Among the other men, with my aching back pressed against the wall, I sat and ate my dinner, lingering over the last crumbs like a child with some rare dainty.

At the end of the forty-five minutes allowed to us at noon, there came again, from the head boss, the order to "Turn out." In a moment the scene of the morning was renewed. There was the same alternation between loading the carts and assorting the débris.