Page:Carl Sandburg - You and Your Job (1910).pdf/8

8 no human touch. What does a singer or a poet or an actor amount to without listeners? What is a beautiful building worth if there isn't anybody to look at it? How could the gay and prosperous children of fortune go shooting over the roadways in an automobile unless ten thousand men had mined the ore and smelted and welded and stood at machines and assembled the parts, and made it into a thing of cunning and wonder?

If you can't find people to agree with you, you like people to dispute with. What's the use of living if there are not other people? Do you see, Bill, an individual life, a life all by yourself, isn't worth two whoops without a social life, a life with other people.

And now to get back to "the quitter." I said that we—all of us, society—made him, Bill, you and I had fairly good homes when we were boys. Our father was lucky enough to have a job most of the time, though it was a little hard back in '93, when the shops ran only four hours a day. Father worked hard and didn't get laid off, but I can remember yet that hunted, weary look he would have when he'd come home at noon, done with work for the day, and would mumble, "They say maybe we'll all be laid off to-morrow.” Bye and bye times got a little better and we could have new shoes a little oftener, there was milk for the coffee, and not so much of potatoes everlastingly on the table. I remember we began to take a daily paper again,