Page:Carl Sandburg - You and Your Job (1910).pdf/13

Rh people really liked bim because he was so peculiar, such a curiosity. But Josiah Flynt, who traveled over America with all kinds of tramps, estimated in 1901 that the tramp army numbered 500,000. Some people say it's terrible that so many men should have so far lost their manhood as to refuse to earn a living. But it would be equally terrible if the whole tramp army should start to earnestly look for work. They would take the places of men who are at work and have families to support. They could live cheaper than the man with a family, and they would bring down wages and lower the standard of living. Remember this when the unshaven bum batters your back door and asks for coffee.

Since the panic broke on us last fall, more and more men have been losing their jobs, and to-day, without a doubt, many millions of men are out of work. The New York Times publishes a statement that in New York city at least a quarter of a million men are idle. Arthur Ruhl says he answered an ad which called for a man to address envelopes at $1 per day. And Ruhl found three hundred men at the office clamoring and elbowing for the job.

It's a sickening, tiresome, disheartening business, Bill, to be out of a job and go from one place to another asking if you can sell your labor power and have people look suspiciously at your, shabby clothes and tired face, and tell you there's nothing doing. Into shop and store and hotel and factory you go, and the answer is always. "Not to-day." Your heart sinks, and