The Daily Worker Newspaper, June 4, 1927, Page 9

A Hobo on Halsted Street r was eight o’clock in the morning on Halsted Street, Chicago, where husky employment sharks fleck their muscles on the sidewalks and urge wage slaves out of work to step right in and be shipped to distant parts where one can labor in return for anything from 30 to 60 cents an hour for his toil. “Shipping them right out now boys” The vocal sounds are jerked thru the nose giv- ing the performance a somewhat professional ef- fect. Here was a tall lean man with his two hands in his empty trousers pockets looking at a sign announcing that railroad labor was wanted. One week ago he had hit the town with a roll of bills he liked to fondle. He spent it and while he was spending it life was pleasant indeed. When he peeled the first bill off the roll it seemed that he could never get to the end of it, but moonshine and the acquisitive women that one is liable to run into on Madison Street, between Racine and the River, are anything but slow. They must live, and an adventurous lumberjack wants to be accom- modated. There he stands now with the earnings of several months only a dream. He tries to kid himself into the belief that he got -his money’s worth.... “Shipping them out today.” He walks right in and trusts himself to the tender mercies of the employment shark. He goes to work for some boss who may now be sporting on the Riviera or whose daughter may be straining her spine bending before the king and queen of England in Buckingham Palace. And the little that he spent on the ladies of easy virtue in Mid-City or in the bootleggeries that dot the topography of that section would not be sufficient to tip the maid that bathes his master’s daughter’s poddle. Yet it took him months to earn that money. Now he: must go and bring in another roll. On a side street leading off Halsted over one hundred men are lined up waiting for an office door to open. It does and they troop in. Two surly faced persons and a woman man the place. It is an agency for distributing circulars. They receive a certain sum from department stores to distribute circulars and they advertise for broken-down men to do the distributing. They get rich on the racket. The distributors keep on gettings poorer and poorer. The component parts of the que were leary about telling how they came to this. Could you blame them? Under a different social system they might be useful members of society and they might not be. Perhaps they might be let starve. Unless they were physically unfit. Parasites in rags or parasites in silk hats. It is a difference in degree. Which is the greatest parasite? But we are now con- cerned with the parasite under the silk topper. He is the lad whose sealp we are out to misappropriate. I walked into McCauley’s store and purchased the American Mercury and the Nation. I would sit down in a restaurant and read what one of our favorite cynics had to say, over a cup of coffee. And one could contrast the dignity of the Nation with the sordidness of the Slave Market. A polite liberal on Vesey Street might be cursing like hell on Halsted. With my head full of random thots and my eyes on the conglomeration of dirts that festooned the street, I walked along. It would not be pleasant to be shipped out on some railroad job. It might be work in the hot sun or in the bitter cold. And then it would take such a long time at 30 cents - an hour to save the price of a suit of clothes. And if one did not feel like buying clothes for his savings it would not last very long anyhow. Suddenly something stopped in front of me. It opened its face and three long yellow teeth seemed to snarl at me. But the eyes were twinkling with merriment and the head was cocked to one side like that of a child planning out the strategy of borrowing the price of an ice cream cone from her father or a girl trying to switch her suitor from eloquent. recitals of the way he made the boss notice him to more intimate tho perhaps even sillier vocal efforts. The clothes on this animated piece of protoplasm seemed to have been designed for a good sized baby elephant. The color was gray. The stranger’s face carried at least eight ounces of coal in its pores but between the tiny black spots there was a diffusion of color which indicated that the bearer was not consumptive. “How about staking a fellow for a meal?” asked. at him. “Tf I give you the price of a meal,” I replied, “what guarantee have I that you will not spend it on liquor.” “To prove to you that I am on the level,” he said, “T will have breakfast with you unless you have dined already.” “This fellow must have been brought up in a boudoir” I soliloquised. “Anyhow” he continued, “I find that it pays to be on the level. When I want a dime for a ‘shot’ I put it that way and I rarely get turned down. But when I want a ‘shot’ and tell my man that it is coffee I want he can tell that I am lying. So I stick to the truth as a matter of business.” “This game is tough,” he continued. “I collected twenty cents a few minutes ago and before I had the dough lodged in my jeans a bunch of buzzards were on my neck and I had to give it up.” Every business has its own undesirable qualities, I thot, and said to the stranger: “Alright, let’s go and eat.” “I know where we can get a meal for twenty cents,” he observed. “Let’s go.” he I tickled my 60 cents and took a good luck ROOMS FOR TRANSIENTS > Said the landlady— “I don’t want any more ladyroomers. , They lock themselves in the bathroom and wash their clothes out. They cook their meals over the gaslight. Td rather have MENroomers than LADYroomers . . .” And being what she is, I guess she would. —LEBARBE. THE COUNT They killed this stiff three times— Once when they tortured him in the death cell; once when they burned him in the chair; last when they buried him in a numbered convict’s grave under the prison yard. And god knows what'll happen to his family . . . It’s hard to satisfy @ state that wants three lives for one! LEBARBE. —4— : By T. J. OFLAHERTY Sittimg at a table my new found friend introduced himself, “My name is Shawneen Healey” he said. “Sounds rather Irish.” The yellow teeth showed again, the eyes twinkled and he gave me a quizzical look. “God, knows when my people came from Ireland but they tell that I look like one.” “My name is O’Flaherty,” I reciprocated. A sense of greater security seemed to overspread his face and he looked at the menu with greater enthusiasm. He evidently thot he had struck luck. I did not show him my bank balance and hoping for the best I encouraged Shawneen Healey to go as far as he liked with the menu. He looked the card over with an appraising eye and I almost had a heart attack when he ordered poached eggs on toast, corned beef hash and a cup of coffee. I could see my sixty cents proving in- adequate but I still had my watch so in case of emergency Old Ben was around the corner. Mine was a cup of coffee. While the waiter was waiting for our orders we sat in silence for a few minutes. Then Shawneen looked at me with one of his eyes on half cock as if trying to size me up. Then he said: “You know, I felt sorry for you when I saw you with the papers under your arm.” “Why so?” “Oh I thot you were one of those poor fellows who have to distribute circulars. You are too good for that kind of work.” I admitted it tho I would not mind distributing circulars for ten dollars a day. But two dollars for that kind of work was beneath me. “As for me,” continued Shawneen loading his fork with a cargo of corned beef hash painted with poached egg, “I don’t go in for that kind of thing. I am a painter by trade and when I get a job I get; money. But work hasn’t much attraction for me.” “T used to be a chronic wage slave many years ago. Then I got fired and found that I did not have a dime but I had a pair of bum lungs. So I took to the road and have not worried about money since. Now my lungs are like two pieces of rhi- nocerous hide and I can stand the cold and the heat with equal comfort. I am'not a bum. I am just a hobo. Say, why don’t you quit-it and turn over a new leaf?” He talked to me like a fond mother begging her wayward son to cut out chewing gum. Or a preacher urging an intelligent citizen to dig out his brains and swallow the bible. Or an insurance agent appealing to the father of a large family to add $500 more to his insurance. Here was a man with a cause he believed_in. “IT work on a labor paper,” I said by way of ex- cuse, “and I am not in much danger of being cor~ rupted by the acquisition of wealth.” “That’s different,” said the hobo, “but it’s funny how people like to work for others.” I thot they had to work for others or eat on others under the capitalist system but when I looked at the check and learned that it was only twenty-five cents I almost agreed with Shawneen. We walked to the desk to pay the bill. Shawneen saw me putting a quarter back in my pocket. “T am not holding on to a nickel,” he said. “Here are two of them to play with,” I answered, and we both went our ways whistling merry airs. ~Drawing by WILLIAM GROPPRE