The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West

by Walter A. Wyckoff

The same concern showed itself again when he presently told me that the Englishman and he always made up their berths themselves, instead of leaving them for the regular bed-makers, who might communicate vermin from other bunks. The hint was sufficient, and I hastened to set his mind at rest by assuring him that I heartily endorsed the plan and would follow it faithfully.

The Englishman I did not see until the next morning. Upon getting up to the six o’clock call, I found that he had turned in without waking me. We sprang out of bed at the same moment, and almost at a glance I knew him for the ex-Tommy Atkins that he is. I shall call him Brown. A wooden chest, studded with brass nails and made fast with a heavy padlock, stood near the foot of his berth. On it lay his working clothes, not thrown down in confusion, but neatly folded and lying in the order of dress. He himself was as trim and straight and as clean as a sapling, and when he returned from his wash he fairly sparkled with the afterglow. Back went the sheets with a single movement of his hand the moment that he was dressed, and over went the mattress, and the pillows began rollicking in the shaking which he gave them. In marvellously short time the bed was remade and the sheets turned back over the foot of the bunk to admit of proper airing.

We have been thrown together by reason of the fact that neither of us is proof against the lobby for long in the evening. It is usually dark by the time I have finished supper, and I go first of all to the sitting-room. It is ablaze with light, and the huge stove is going under full head and all the windows are closed and some scores of men are smoking old pipes. I have known nights when such a place would have been a most welcome escape from exposure, but having now a choice it is never long before I leave the lobby for the cabin. Here I generally find Brown seated on the box at the foot of his berth, playing an old fife which is singularly pliant to his touch. Throwing myself in my bunk I have lain there by the hour together listening to his music and watching him as he beat time to the “British Grenadiers” and the “Blue Bells of Scotland,” and to tunes of no end of barrack-room ballads, wondering the while what vision it was of India or of Burmah, perhaps, or of the Soudan, or possibly of the Afghan frontier that brought that look of longing to his eyes.

He is the soul of soldier-like precision; he never misses a day at work except the one which immediately follows pay-day, and that because he never misses his spree. The Irishman and I have come to count with perfect regularity upon Brown’s not turning up on the evening when he is paid. About three or four o’clock on the next morning we hear him open the cabin door softly, and, supporting himself with a hand on the upper berths, move slowly across the floor until he has reached his bed, where he throws himself on his face as he is and sleeps for twenty-four hours.

I was not long a member of Mr. O’Shea’s gang, for at the end of the first week another laborer and I were singled out for special duty on the roads. But on Wednesday afternoon of that week two men joined the force of unskilled laborers who filled us all with curious interest. There is another gang of about the same number as Mr. O’Shea’s, with which we are often thrown in our work and which is under the command of a Mr. Russell.

At one o’clock on Wednesday afternoon I went as usual to report with the other men at the superintendent’s office where we receive our orders. Mr. Dutton, the superintendent, always comes out and looks us over and consults for a few minutes with the sub-bosses, and then orders the various gangs to different sections of the grounds.

Two young men were standing near his office-door on that Wednesday afternoon when I came up at a few minutes before one. I did not give them a second glance at first, for I took for granted that they were tourists who had entered the grounds by special permission and were now waiting for a guide. But in another moment I happened to see Mr. Dutton’s clerk beckon them within the office where he took their names and gave to each a metallic disk upon which a number was stamped. Then they came out again and, taking off their coats, stepped in among the gathering company of workmen and waited to be assigned.

By this time we were all staring at them agape, but they stood the ordeal with a frank unconsciousness which filled me with admiration. They were about of age, two clean-cut, well-groomed, clear-eyed English boys, who looked as though they might be public-school bred, and I noticed that their coats bore the name of a London tailor. One, a brown-haired lad, with large, sober, brown eyes and a manner of considerable reserve, was exceedingly good-looking, and the other, a fair-haired, fair-skinned, alert-looking boy, plainly the spokesman for the two, had a face of unusually fine drawing.

Mr. Dutton hesitated a moment in their case, but finally ordered them to join Mr. Russell’s gang, and in a few minutes we were widely separated. Repeatedly in the early afternoon I found myself thinking about them and wondering why it was that they must earn their bread by unskilled labor. Two hours of the afternoon remained when there came an order from Mr. Dutton to our gang to repair to the Transportation Building. We found, upon getting there, that we had been summoned to reinforce Mr. Russell’s men, who were unloading from a car two large steam-rollers. Again I saw the young Englishmen, and I had a chance to watch them at work.

By this time the gang-men had sated their curiosity in staring, and now ignored the lads as being anything but laborers with themselves, which was much the best-bred thing that they could have done.