I shuddered to think what would have happened if I had been a half-starved boy, and had resented that man's insult. Doubtless I would have been beaten into insensibility.
Finally, after another half hour, he yelled from the doorway:
"Hey, there, you fellers, get up and get out of here!"
Quickly we obeyed and were driven down into the cellar. From there we were driven to the woodyard, where we were made to saw wood for two hours. The strong men sawed their stint in much less time than the weak ones. For the latter it must have meant two long hours indeed, weakened as many of them were by a chronic hunger and disease, and having gone supperless to bed and being as yet without breakfast.
When I had finished paying for my "entertainment," I was again driven into a place to put my saw and saw-buck away, and then I was allowed to go to breakfast into a cheerless, overcrowded room; even at this stage of the game I was driven to three different places before I was allowed to be seated.
They brought me some bean soup with beans swimming in it, so bitter with salt I could not eat it; a water cracker so hard I could not bite it, and a dirty slice of bread, that one of the indigent, but willing workers, carried in his soiled hands and dropped by my plate.
A very hungry looking young man who sat beside me tasted his soup and exclaimed:
"I'm hungry, but I'll beg or steal before I'll eat this stuff."
We both got up and left the "Hawkins Street Woodyard" in disgust; he going down the street for breakfast, and I in another direction to my hotel.
During this, my social study, I have received many letters from the itinerant worker.[B]
[B] See worker's letter in the Portland story, Chapter xv.
I may add that I did not investigate Boston's Associated Charities, but I did catch a suggestion or two that as far as helping the temporarily out-of-work and destitute toiler, both man and woman, they were inadequate and their good qualities did not exceed the "Hawkins Street Woodyard."
Dressed in my garb of a worker, which encourages confidence because it excites sympathy, on another day, on the Boston Common, I was attracted by two idle men sitting on a nearby seat, one an Irishman and the other a Swede. They seemed to be feeling about as good as cheap Boston beer could make them, and the Irishman in an earnest yet jovial way was trying to convince the Swede that the world was flat instead of round. I dropped down on the seat beside them, and just then the Swede saw a man he thought he knew, and abruptly left us.