Page:Carl Sandburg - You and Your Job (1910).pdf/15

Rh fight side by side to get laws passed requiring the government to guarantee work to every man who is willing to work.

You see, Bill, we're manufacturing quitters, turning them out by the thousands every month. In London they call them Hooligans, and the East End of London is a pit of sodden hopelessness. A man in America wrote a book showing that New York is almost as bad as London. This man's name is Jacob Riis. Theodore Roosevelt, who likes to have his picture taken on horseback, said of Jacob Riis, "He is the most useful man in America." The imperial personage in the White House has thus commended Riis, and his book on "How the Other Half Lives," shows a man of ability, courage and sympathy. No one would call him a quitter. Well, Riis wrote one book in which he gives the story of his life, and tells us of a critical moment, when he, "the most useful man in America," was a quitter. He had been knocked from one place to another, working at different jobs. He was discouraged because he couldn't get anything steady, and one night he sat out on the end of a pier in New York harbor. His money was almost gone. No job was in sight. He seemed farther than ever from bringing over to America the girl he loved in Denmark. For weeks he had been turned down wherever he asked for work. He thought it all over, what a curious gamble life is, how two men may have equal gifts and both work hard and long for their ambitions, and one will get rewards and be decked with laurels and the other go in want