The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West

by Walter A. Wyckoff

Jim was silent; he did not see the joke any better than did we, who now crowded about the clerk.

“Stand off,” he ordered us, with a gesture of impatience and an oath. “Don’t you fellows come so near. I guess most of you need water more than you need a job.”

There followed some minutes of such banter, while the clerk looked us over and examined hastily some letters of recommendation which were held out to him. Then abruptly, with the air of a busy man chafing at the useless waste of his valuable time, he withdrew a step or two from the crowd, and from this coign of vantage he arbitrarily singled out four men. Having called them aside he ordered them to report at ten o’clock on the next morning at the packing-house, where a member of the firm would see them and select one of them for the place, which was that of general utility man about a private house, at a wage of board and lodging and fifteen dollars a month.

I was not one of the number. In a few moments the men had all gone their several ways, but I waited behind, and seeing a chance of speaking to the clerk alone, I went up to him.

“Would you mind looking at these references?” I asked, and handed out two, one from the proprietor of the “—— House,” where I had served as porter, and another from Mr. Hill, the farmer.

“Certainly not,” he said, good-naturedly; and when he had read them he handed them back to me with the remark that I, too, might call with the others at ten o’clock.

Under the stone arch which spans the entrance to the Union Stock-yards I passed unchallenged the next morning. A wooden sidewalk led me along a miry road which seemed to pierce the centre of the yards. Men of widely varying ages passed and repassed me, mounted upon branded mustangs. They were riders who cared nothing for appearance in either kit or form, but rode with the free grace of cowboys. On every side were scores of acres of open pens enclosed by stout wooden fences six palings high, with water and fodder troughs along the sides. From them came the deep, far lowing of a thousand herds of cattle which stood crowded in the pens or thinned to a few remaining, all of them patiently awaiting death. From great covered sheds you could hear the ceaseless bleating of countless flocks of sheep. From long covered passages overhead, each an awful bridge of sighs, there came the sharp clatter of cloven hoofs on wooden planks, along which droves of cattle were being driven to slaughter. In the distance beyond all this loomed high the unsightly packing-houses, where, with scientific efficiency and carefulest economy of materials, daily hecatombs are offered up for human life.

I soon found my way to the desired office. It was ten o’clock exactly, and to my great surprise I alone of the five selected men was on hand. I was told to wait, and a corner near a high desk was indicated as a place where I might stand. It was in a wide passage along which ranged inner offices enclosed by ground-glass partitions. Clerks were passing constantly from one office to another and meeting the requirements of business errands as they came in. Presently one of them spoke to me, and learning that I had received no reply from the clerk to whom I had first made my purpose known, he politely volunteered his services, and soon brought back word that Mr. —— would see me in a few minutes.

The few minutes had grown to thirty, when one of the other five men appeared. He was a fair-haired Swede of five-and-twenty, rather stout in frame, and dressed all in black, his coat, of the “Prince Albert” type, falling short of his knees, and disclosing about his neck and wrists the white of neat linen. With his hair brushed smooth, and one black-gloved hand grasping a fat umbrella and the other a soft felt hat, he might have been a divinity student.

We nodded to each other as he took up his stand in another out-of-the-way quarter of the hall and joined me in waiting for a summons. Among the passing clerks there presently appeared the one who had met us on the day before. He was not in bantering mood now, so he asserted his superiority by ignoring us. The one who had already spoken to me lost no opportunity as he passed of saying an encouraging word, assuring us that Mr. —— would certainly see us before long.