BOOK I

_Toil_

The dignity and tragedy of labor; pictures of the actual conditions under which men and women work in mills and factories, fields and mines.

The Man With the Hoe[A]

[A] By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.

BY EDWIN MARKHAM

(This poem, which was written after seeing Millet's world-famous painting, was published in 1899 by a California school-principal, and made a profound impression. It has been hailed as "the battle-cry of the next thousand years")

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world. Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

Is this the thing the Lord God made and gave To have dominion over sea and land; To trace the stars and search the heavens for power; To feel the passion of Eternity? Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns And marked their ways upon the ancient deep? Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf There is no shape more terrible than this-- More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed-- More filled with signs and portents for the soul-- More fraught with menace to the universe.

What gulfs between him and the seraphim! Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? What the long reaches of the peaks of song, The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop; Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, Plundered, profaned and disinherited, Cries protest to the Judges of the World, A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to God, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? How will you ever straighten up this shape; Touch it again with immortality; Give back the upward looking and the light; Rebuild in it the music and the dream; Make right the immemorial infamies, Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, How will the Future reckon with this Man? How answer his brute question in that hour When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world? How will it be with kingdoms and with kings-- With those who shaped him to the thing he is-- When this dumb Terror shall reply to God, After the silence of the centuries?

Country Life

(_From "The Village"_)

BY GEORGE CRABBE

(One of the earliest of English realistic poets, 1754-1832; called "The Poet of the Poor")

Or will you deem them amply paid in health, Labor's fair child, that languishes with wealth? Go then! and see them rising with the sun, Through a long course of daily toil to run; See them beneath the dog-star's raging heat, When the knees tremble and the temples beat; Behold them, leaning on their scythes, look o'er The labor past, and toils to come explore; See them alternate suns and showers engage, And hoard up aches and anguish for their age; Through fens and marshy moors their steps pursue, Where their warm pores imbibe the evening dew; Then own that labor may as fatal be To these thy slaves, as thine excess to thee.

An Aged Laborer

BY RICHARD JEFFERIES

(English essayist and nature student, 1848-1887)

For weeks and weeks the stark black oaks stood straight out of the snow as masts of ships with furled sails frozen and ice-bound in the haven of the deep valley. Never was such a long winter.

One morning a laboring man came to the door with a spade, and asked if he could dig the garden, or try to, at the risk of breaking the tool in the ground. He was starving; he had had no work for six months, he said, since the first frost started the winter. Nature and the earth and the gods did not trouble about him, you see. Another aged man came once a week regularly; white as the snow through which he walked. In summer he worked; since the winter began he had had no employment, but supported himself by going round to the farms in rotation. He had no home of any kind. Why did he not go into the workhouse? "I be afeared if I goes in there they'll put me with the rough 'uns, and very likely I should get some of my clothes stole." Rather than go into the workhouse, he would totter round in the face of the blasts that might cover his weak old limbs with drift. There was a sense of dignity and manhood left still; his clothes were worn, but clean and decent; he was no companion of rogues; the snow and frost, the straw of the outhouses, was better than that. He was struggling against age, against nature, against circumstances; the entire weight of society, law and order pressed upon him to force him to lose his self-respect and liberty. He would rather risk his life in the snow-drift. Nature, earth and the gods did not help him; sun and stars, where were they? He knocked at the doors of the farms and found good in man only--not in Law or Order, but in individual man alone.

Farm Laborers

BY JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE

(English poet, playwright and novelist, born 1860)

Grand, patient, long-suffering fellows these men were, up at five, summer and winter, foddering their horses, maybe, hours before there would be food for themselves, miserably paid, housed like cattle, and when rheumatism seized them, liable to be flung aside like a broken graip. As hard was the life of the women: coarse food, chaff beds, damp clothes their portion, their sweethearts in the service of masters who were loath to fee a married man. Is it to be wondered that these lads who could be faithful unto death drank soddenly on their one free day; that these girls, starved of opportunities for womanliness, of which they could make as much as the finest lady, sometimes woke after a holiday to wish that they might wake no more?

Helotage

(_From "Sartor Resartus"_)

BY THOMAS CARLYLE

(One of the most famous of British essayists, 1795-1881; historian of the French Revolution, and master of a vivid and picturesque prose-style)

It is not because of his toils that I lament for the poor: we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is worse; no faithful workman finds his task a pastime. The poor is hungry and athirst; but for him also there is food and drink: he is heavy-laden and weary; but for him also the Heavens send sleep, and of the deepest; in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy haven of rest envelops him, and fitful glitterings of cloud-skirted dreams. But what I do mourn over is, that the lamp of his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly, or even of earthly, knowledge should visit him; but only, in the haggard darkness, like two spectres, Fear and Indignation bear him company. Alas, while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated!, Alas, was this too a Breath of God; bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!--That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the minute, as by some computations it does. The miserable fraction of Science which our united Mankind, in a wide universe of Nescience, has acquired, why is not this, with all diligence, imparted to all?

Played Out

(_From "Songs of the Dead End"_)

BY PATRICK MACGILL

(A young Irishman, called the "Navvy poet"; born 1890. From the age of twelve to twenty a farm laborer, ditch-digger and quarry-man. As this work goes to press, he is fighting with his regiment in Flanders)

As a bullock falls in the crooked ruts, he fell when the day was o'er, The hunger gripping his stinted guts, his body shaken and sore. They pulled it out of the ditch in the dark, as a brute is pulled from its lair, The corpse of the navvy, stiff and stark, with the clay on its face and hair.

In Christian lands, with calloused hands, he labored for others' good, In workshop and mill, ditchway and drill, earnest, eager, and rude; Unhappy and gaunt with worry and want, a food to the whims of fate, Hashing it out and booted about at the will of the goodly and great.

To him was applied the scorpion lash, for him the gibe and the goad-- The roughcast fool of our moral wash, the rugous wretch of the road. Willing to crawl for a pittance small to the swine of the tinsel sty, Beggared and burst from the very first, he chooses the ditch to die-- ... Go, pick the dead from the sloughy bed, and hide him from mortal eye.

He tramped through the colorless winter land, or swined in the scorching heat, The dry skin hacked on his sapless hands or blistering on his feet; He wallowed in mire unseen, unknown, where your houses of pleasure rise, And hapless, hungry, and chilled to the bone, he builded the edifice.

In cheerless model[A] and filthy pub, his sinful hours were passed, Or footsore, weary, he begged his grub, in the sough of the hail-whipped blast, So some might riot in wealth and ease, with food and wine be crammed, He wrought like a mule, in muck to his knees, dirty, dissolute, damned.

[A] A "model" is an English resort for wayfarers, maintained by charity.

Arrogant, adipose, you sit in the homes he builded high; Dirty the ditch, in the depths of it he chooses a spot to die, Foaming with nicotine-tainted lips, holding his aching breast, Dropping down like a cow that slips, smitten with rinderpest; Drivelling yet of the work and wet, swearing as sinners swear, Raving the rule of the gambling school, mixing it up with a prayer.

He lived like a brute as the navvies live, and went as the cattle go, No one to sorrow and no one to shrive, for heaven ordained it so-- He handed his check to the shadow in black, and went to the misty lands, Never a mortal to close his eyes or a woman to cross his hands.

_As a bullock falls in the rugged ruts He fell when the day was o'er, Hunger gripping his weasened guts, But never to hunger more_--

_They pulled it out of the ditch in the dark, The chilling frost on its hair, The mole-skinned navvy stiff and stark From no particular where._

Rounding the Horn[A]

[A] By permission of the Macmillan Co.

(_From "Dauber"_)

BY JOHN MASEFIELD

(An English poet who has had a varied career as sailor, laborer and even bartender upon the Bowery, New York. Born 1873, his narrative poems of humble life made him famous almost over night)

Then came the cry of "Call all hands on deck!" The Dauber knew its meaning; it was come: Cape Horn, that tramples beauty into wreck, And crumples steel and smites the strong man dumb. Down clattered flying kites and staysails: some Sang out in quick, high calls: the fair-leads skirled, And from the south-west came the end of the world....

"Lay out!" the Bosun yelled. The Dauber laid Out on the yard, gripping the yard, and feeling Sick at the mighty space of air displayed Below his feet, where mewing birds were wheeling. A giddy fear was on him; he was reeling. He bit his lip half through, clutching the jack. A cold sweat glued the shirt upon his back.

The yard was shaking, for a brace was loose. He felt that he would fall; he clutched, he bent, Clammy with natural terror to the shoes While idiotic promptings came and went. Snow fluttered on a wind-flaw and was spent; He saw the water darken. Someone yelled, "Frap it; don't stay to furl! Hold on!" He held.

Darkness came down--half darkness--in a whirl; The sky went out, the waters disappeared. He felt a shocking pressure of blowing hurl The ship upon her side. The darkness speared At her with wind; she staggered, she careered, Then down she lay. The Dauber felt her go; He saw her yard tilt downwards. Then the snow

Whirled all about--dense, multitudinous, cold-- Mixed with the wind's one devilish thrust and shriek, Which whiffled out men's tears, defeated, took hold, Flattening the flying drift against the cheek. The yards buckled and bent, man could not speak. The ship lay on her broadside; the wind's sound Had devilish malice at having got her downed....

How long the gale had blown he could not tell, Only the world had changed, his life had died. A moment now was everlasting hell. Nature an onslaught from the weather side, A withering rush of death, a frost that cried, Shrieked, till he withered at the heart; a hail Plastered his oilskins with an icy mail....

"Up!" yelled the Bosun; "up and clear the wreck!" The Dauber followed where he led; below He caught one giddy glimpsing of the deck Filled with white water, as though heaped with snow. He saw the streamers of the rigging blow Straight out like pennons from the splintered mast, Then, all sense dimmed, all was an icy blast

Roaring from nether hell and filled with ice, Roaring and crashing on the jerking stage, An utter bridle given to utter vice, Limitless power mad with endless rage Withering the soul; a minute seemed an age. He clutched and hacked at ropes, at rags of sail, Thinking that comfort was a fairy-tale

Told long ago--long, long ago--long since Heard of in other lives--imagined, dreamed-- There where the basest beggar was a prince. To him in torment where the tempest screamed, Comfort and warmth and ease no longer seemed Things that a man could know; soul, body, brain, Knew nothing but the wind, the cold, the pain.

Insouciance in Storm

(_From "The Cry of Youth"_)

BY HARRY KEMP

(A young American poet who has wandered over the world as sailor, harvest hand and tramp; born 1883)

Deep in an ore-boat's hold Where great-bulked boilers loom And yawning mouths of fire Irradiate the gloom,

I saw half-naked men Made thralls to flame and steam, Whose bodies, dripping sweat, Shone with an oily gleam.

There, all the sullen night, While waves boomed overhead And smote the lurching ship, The ravenous fires they fed;

They did not think it brave: They even dared to joke! I saw them light their pipes And puff calm rings of smoke!

I saw a Passer sprawl Over his load of coal-- At which a Fireman laughed Until it shook his soul:

_All this in a hollow shell Whose half-submerged form On Lake Superior tossed 'Mid rushing hills of storm!_

FROM THE SAILORS' CATECHISM

Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able, The seventh, holystone the deck and scrub the cable.

Stokers[A]

[A] By permission of the Macmillan Co.

(_From "The Harbor"_)

BY ERNEST POOLE

(American playwright and novelist, born 1880)

We crawled down a short ladder and through low passageways, dripping wet, and so came into the stokehole.

This was a long narrow chamber with a row of glowing furnace doors. Wet coal and coal-dust lay on the floor. At either end a small steel door opened into bunkers that ran along the sides of the ship, deep down near the bottom, containing thousands of tons of soft coal. In the stokehole the fires were not yet up, but by the time the ship was at sea the furnace mouths would be white hot and the men at work half naked. They not only shovelled coal into the flames, they had to spread it as well, and at intervals rake out the "clinkers" in fiery masses on the floor. On these a stream of water played, filling the chamber with clouds of steam. In older ships, like this one, a "lead stoker" stood at the head of the line and set the pace for the others to follow. He was paid more to keep up the pace. But on the big new liners this pacer was replaced by a gong.

"And at each stroke of the gong you shovel," said Joe. "You do this till you forget your name. Every time the boat pitches the floor heaves you forward, the fire spurts at you out of the doors, and the gong keeps on like a sledge-hammer coming down on top of your mind. And all you think of is your bunk and the time when you're to tumble in."

From the stokers' quarters presently there came a burst of singing.

"Now let's go back," he ended, "and see how they're getting ready for this."

As we crawled back, the noise increased, and swelled to a roar as we entered. The place was pandemonium. Those groups I had noticed around the bags had been getting out the liquor, and now at eight o'clock in the morning half the crew were already well soused. Some moved restlessly about. One huge bull of a creature with limpid shining eyes stopped suddenly with a puzzled stare, and then leaned back on a bunk and laughed uproariously. From there he lurched over the shoulder of a thin, wiry, sober man who, sitting on the edge of a bunk, was slowly spelling out the words of a newspaper aeroplane story. The big man laughed again and spit, and the thin man jumped half up and snarled.

Louder rose the singing. Half the crew was crowded close around a little red-faced cockney. He was the modern "chanty man." With sweat pouring down his cheeks and the muscles of his neck drawn taut, he was jerking out verse after verse about women. He sang to an old "chanty" tune, one that I remembered well. But he was not singing out under the stars, he was screaming at steel walls down here in the bottom of the ship. And although he kept speeding up his song, the crowd were too drunk to wait for the chorus; their voices kept tumbling in over his, and soon it was only a frenzy of sound, a roar with yells rising out of it. The singers kept pounding each other's backs or waving bottles over their heads. Two bottles smashed together and brought a still higher burst of glee.

"I'm tired!" Joe shouted. "Let's get out!"

I caught a glimpse of his strained frowning face. Again it came over me in a flash, the years he had spent in holes like this, in this hideous rotten world of his, while I had lived joyously in mine. And as though he had read the thought in my disturbed and troubled eyes, "Let's go up where _you_ belong," he said.

I followed him up and away from his friends. As we climbed ladder after ladder, fainter and fainter on our ears rose that yelling from below. Suddenly we came out on deck and slammed an iron door behind us. And I was where _I_ belonged.

I was in dazzling sunshine and keen, frosty autumn air. I was among gay throngs of people. Dainty women brushed me by. I felt the softness of their furs, I breathed the fragrant scent of them and of the flowers that they wore, I saw their trim, fresh, immaculate clothes. I heard the joyous tumult of their talking and their laughing to the regular crash of the band--all the life of the ship I had known so well.

And I walked through it all as though in a dream. On the dock I watched it spell-bound--until with handkerchiefs waving and voices calling down good-byes, that throng of happy travellers moved slowly out into midstream.

And I knew that deep below all this, down in the bottom of the ship, the stokers were still singing.

Caliban in the Coal Mines

(_From "Challenge"_)

BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER

(American poet, born 1885)

God, we don't like to complain-- We know that the mine is no lark-- But--there's the pools from the rain; But--there's the cold and the dark.

God, You don't know what it is-- You, in Your well-lighted sky, Watching the meteors whizz; Warm, with the sun always by.

God, if You had but the moon Stuck in Your cap for a lamp, Even You'd tire of it soon, Down in the dark and the damp.

Nothing but blackness above, And nothing that moves but the cars-- God, if You wish for our love, Fling us a handful of stars!

The Fertilizer Man

(_From "The Jungle"_)

BY UPTON SINCLAIR

(A novel portraying the lives of the workers in the Chicago stockyards; published in 1906)

His labor took him about one minute to learn. Before him was one of the vents of the mill in which the fertilizer was being ground--rushing forth in a great brown river, with a spray of the finest dust floating forth in clouds. Jurgis was given a shovel, and along with half a dozen others it was his task to shovel this fertilizer into carts. That others were at work he knew by the sound, and by the fact that he sometimes collided with them; otherwise they might as well not have been there, for in the blinding dust-storm a man could not see six feet in front of his face. When he had filled one cart he had to grope around him until another came, and if there was none on hand he continued to grope till one arrived. In five minutes he was, of course, a mass of fertilizer from head to feet; they gave him a sponge to tie over his mouth, so that he could breathe, but the sponge did not prevent his lips and eyelids from caking up with it and his ears from filling solid. He looked like a brown ghost at twilight--from hair to shoes he became the color of the building and of everything in it, and for that matter a hundred yards outside it. The building had to be left open, and when the wind blew Durham and Company lost a great deal of fertilizer.

Working in his shirt-sleeves, and with the thermometer at over a hundred, the phosphates soaked in through every pore of Jurgis' skin, and in five minutes he had a headache, and in fifteen was almost dazed. The blood was pounding in his brain like an engine's throbbing; there was a frightful pain in the top of his skull, and he could hardly control his hands. Still, with the memory of his four jobless months behind him, he fought on, in a frenzy of determination; and half an hour later he began to vomit--he vomited until it seemed as if his inwards must be torn into shreds. A man could get used to the fertilizer-mill, the boss had said, if he would only make up his mind to it; but Jurgis now began to see that it was a question of making up his stomach.

At the end of that day of horror, he could scarcely stand. He had to catch himself now and then, and lean against a building and get his bearings. Most of the men, when they came out, made straight for a saloon--they seemed to place fertilizer and rattlesnake poison in one class. But Jurgis was too ill to think of drinking--he could only make his way to the street and stagger on to a car. He had a sense of humor, and later on, when he became an old hand, he used to think it fun to board a street-car and see what happened. Now, however, he was too ill to notice it--how the people in the car began to gasp and sputter, to put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and transfix him with furious glances. Jurgis only knew that a man in front of him immediately got up and gave him a seat; and that half a minute later the two people on each side of him got up; and that in a full minute the crowded car was nearly empty--those passengers who could not get room on the platform having gotten out to walk.

Of course Jurgis had made his home a miniature fertilizer-mill a minute after entering. The stuff was half an inch deep in his skin--his whole system was full of it, and it would have taken a week not merely of scrubbing, but of vigorous exercise, to get it out of him. As it was, he could be compared with nothing known to man, save that newest discovery of the savants, a substance which emits energy for an unlimited time, without being itself in the least diminished in power. He smelt so that he made all the food at the table taste, and set the whole family to vomiting; for himself it was three days before he could keep anything upon his stomach--he might wash his hands, and use a knife and fork, but were not his mouth and throat filled with the poison?

And still Jurgis stuck it out! In spite of splitting headaches he would stagger down to the plant and take up his stand once more, and begin to shovel in the blinding clouds of dust. And so at the end of the week he was a fertilizer-man for life--he was able to eat again, and though his head never stopped aching, it ceased to be so bad that he could not work.

Pittsburgh

BY JAMES OPPENHEIM

(American poet and novelist; born 1882)

Over his face his gray hair drifting hides his Labor-glory in smoke, Strange through his breath the soot is sifting, his feet are buried in coal and coke. By night hands twisted and lurid in fires, by day hands blackened with grime and oil, He toils at the foundries and never tires, and ever and ever his lot is toil.

He speeds his soul till his body wrestles with terrible tonnage and terrible time, Out through the yards and over the trestles the flat-cars clank and the engines chime, His mills through windows seem eaten with fire, his high cranes travel, his ingots roll, And billet and wheel and whistle and wire shriek with the speeding up of his soul.

Lanterns with reds and greens a-glisten wave the way and the head-light glares, The back-bent laborers glance and listen and out through the night the tail-light flares-- Deep in the mills like a tipping cradle the huge converter turns on its wheel And sizzling spills in the ten-ton ladle a golden water of molten steel.

Yet screwed with toil his low face searches shadow-edged fires and whited pits, Gripping his levers his body lurches, grappling his irons he prods and hits, And deaf with the roll and clangor and rattle with its sharp escaping staccato of steam, And blind with flame and worn with battle, into his tonnage he turns his dream.

The world he has builded rises around us, our wonder-cities and weaving rails, Over his wires a marvel has found us, a glory rides in our wheeled mails, For the Earth grows small with strong Steel woven, and they come together who plotted apart-- But he who has wrought this thing in his oven knows only toil and the tired heart.

The Navvy[A]

[A] By permission of E. P. Dutton & Co.

(_From "Children of the Dead End"_)

BY PATRICK MACGILL

(See page 32)

At that time there were thousands of navvies working at Kinlochleven waterworks. We spoke of waterworks, but only the contractors knew what the work was intended for. We did not know, and we did not care. We never asked questions concerning the ultimate issue of our labors, and we were not supposed to ask questions. If a man throws red muck over a wall today and throws it back again tomorrow, what the devil is it to him if he keeps throwing that same muck over the wall for the rest of his life, knowing not why nor wherefore, provided he gets paid sixpence an hour for his labor? There were so many tons of earth to be lifted and thrown somewhere else; we lifted them and threw them somewhere else; so many cubic yards of iron-hard rocks to be blasted and carried away; we blasted and carried them away, but never asked questions and never knew what results we were laboring to bring about. We turned the Highlands into a cinder-heap, and were as wise at the beginning as at the end of the task. Only when we completed the job, and returned to the town, did we learn from the newspapers that we had been employed on the construction of the biggest aluminium factory in the kingdom. All that we knew was that we had gutted whole mountains and hills in the operations....

Above and over all, the mystery of the night and the desert places hovered inscrutable and implacable. All around the ancient mountains sat like brooding witches, dreaming on their own story of which they knew neither the beginning nor the end. Naked to the four winds of heaven and all the rains of the world, they had stood there for countless ages in all their sinister strength, undefied and unconquered, until man, with puny hands and little tools of labor, came to break the spirit of their ancient mightiness.

And we, the men who braved this task, were outcasts of the world. A blind fate, a vast merciless mechanism, cut and shaped the fabric of our existence. We were men despised when we were most useful, rejected when we were not needed, and forgotten when our troubles weighed upon us heavily. We were the men sent out to fight the spirit of the wastes, rob it of all its primeval horrors, and batter down the barriers of its world-old defences. Where we were working a new town would spring up some day; it was already springing up, and then, if one of us walked there, "a man with no fixed address," he would be taken up and tried as a loiterer and vagrant.

Even as I thought of these things a shoulder of jagged rock fell into a cutting far below. There was the sound of a scream in the distance, and a song died away in the throat of some rude singer. Then out of the pit I saw men, red with the muck of the deep earth and redder still with the blood of a stricken mate, come forth, bearing between them a silent figure. Another of the pioneers of civilization had given up his life for the sake of society....

The plaintive sunset waned into a sickly haze one evening, and when the night slipped upwards to the mountain peaks never a star came out into the vastness of the high heavens. Next morning we had to thaw the door of our shack out of the muck into which it was frozen during the night. Outside the snow had fallen heavily on the ground, and the virgin granaries of winter had been emptied on the face of the world.

Unkempt, ragged, and dispirited, we slunk to our toil, the snow falling on our shoulders and forcing its way insistently through our worn and battered bluchers. The cuttings were full of slush to the brim, and we had to grope through them with our hands until we found the jumpers and hammers at the bottom. These we held under our coats until the heat of our bodies warmed them, then we went on with our toil.

At intervals during the day the winds of the mountain put their heads together and swept a whirlstorm of snow down upon us, wetting each man to the pelt. Our tools froze until the hands that gripped them were scarred as if by red-hot spits. We shook uncertain over our toil, our sodden clothes scalding and itching the skin with every movement of the swinging hammers. Near at hand the lean derrick jibs whirled on their pivots like spectres of some ghoulish carnival, and the muck-barrows crunched backwards and forwards, all their dirt and rust hidden in woolly mantles of snow. Hither and thither the little black figures of the workers moved across the waste of whiteness like shadows on a lime-washed wall. Their breath steamed out on the air and disappeared in space like the evanescent and fragile vapor of frying mushrooms....

When night came on we crouched around the hot-plate and told stories of bygone winters, when men dropped frozen stiff in the trenches where they labored. A few tried to gamble near the door, but the wind that cut through the chinks of the walls chased them to the fire.

Outside the winds of the night scampered madly, whistling through every crevice of the shack and threatening to smash all its timbers to pieces. We bent closer over the hot-plate, and the many who could not draw near to the heat scrambled into bed and sought warmth under the meagre blankets. Suddenly the lamp went out, and a darkness crept into the corners of the dwelling, causing the figures of my mates to assume fantastic shapes in the gloom. The circle around the hot-plate drew closer, and long lean arms were stretched out towards the flames and the redness. Seldom may a man have the chance to look on hands like those of my mates. Fingers were missing from many, scraggy scars seaming along the wrists or across the palms of others told of accidents which had taken place on many precarious shifts. The faces near me were those of ghouls worn out in some unholy midnight revel. Sunken eyes glared balefully in the dim unearthly light of the fire, and as I looked at them a moment's terror settled on my soul. For a second I lived in an early age, and my mates were the cave-dwellers of an older world than mine. In the darkness, near the door, a pipe glowed brightly for a moment, then the light went suddenly out and the gloom settled again.

The Song of the Wage Slave

(_From "The Spell of the Yukon"_)

BY ROBERT W. SERVICE

(Canadian poet, born 1876. His poems of Alaska and the great Northwest have attained wide popularity)

When the long, long day is over, and the Big Boss gives me my pay, I hope that it won't be hell-fire, as some of the parsons say. And I hope that it won't be heaven, with some of the parsons I've met-- All I want is just quiet, just to rest and forget. Look at my face, toil-furrowed; look at my calloused hands; Master, I've done Thy bidding, wrought in Thy many lands-- Wrought for the little masters, big-bellied they be, and rich; I've done their desire for a daily hire, and I die like a dog in a ditch.... I, the primitive toiler, half naked and grimed to the eyes, Sweating it deep in their ditches, swining it stark in their styes; Hurling down forests before me, spanning tumultuous streams; Down in the ditch building o'er me palaces fairer than dreams; Boring the rock to the ore-bed, driving the road through the fen, Resolute, dumb, uncomplaining, a man in a world of men. Master, I've filled my contract, wrought in Thy many lands; Not by my sins wilt Thou judge me, but by the work of my hands. Master, I've done Thy bidding, and the light is low in the west, And the long, long shift is over.... Master, I've earned it--Rest.

Manhattan

BY CHARLES HANSON TOWNE

(American poet, born 1877)

Here in the furnace City, in the humid air they faint, God's pallid poor, His people, with scarcely space for breath; So foul their teeming houses, so full of shame and taint, They cannot crowd within them for the frightful fear of Death.

Yet somewhere, Lord, Thine open seas are singing with the rain, And somewhere underneath Thy stars the cool waves crash and beat; Why is it here, and only here, are huddled Death and Pain, And here the form of Horror stalks, a menace in the street!

The burning flagstones gleam like glass at morning and at noon, The giant walls shut out the breeze--if any breeze should blow; And high above the smothering town at midnight hangs the moon, A red medallion in the sky, a monster cameo.

Yet somewhere, God, drenched roses bloom by fountains draped with mist In old, lost gardens of the earth made lyrical with rain; Why is it here a million brows by hungry Death are kissed, And here is packed, one Summer night, a whole world's fiery pain!

A Department-Store Clerk

(_From "The House of Bondage"_)

BY REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN

(American novelist, born 1877)

Katie Flanagan arrived at the Lennox department store every morning at a quarter to eight o'clock. She passed through the employees' dark entrance, a unit in a horde of other workers, and registered the instant of her arrival on a time-machine that could in no wise be suborned to perjury. She hung up her wraps in a subterranean cloak-room, and, hurrying to the counter to which she was assigned, first helped in "laying out the stock," and then stood behind her wares, exhibiting, cajoling, selling, until an hour before noon. At that time she was permitted to run away for exactly forty-five minutes for the glass of milk and two pieces of bread and jam that composed her luncheon. This repast disposed of, she returned to the counter and remained behind it, standing like a war-worn watcher on the ramparts of a beleaguered city, till the store closed at six, when there remained to her at least fifteen minutes more of work before her sales-book was balanced and the wares covered up for the night. There were times, indeed, when she did not leave the store until seven o'clock, but those times were caused rather by customers than by the management of the store, which could prevent new shoppers from entering the doors after six, but could hardly turn out those already inside.

The automatic time-machine and a score of more annoying, and equally automatic, human beings kept watch upon all that she