Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/136

126 more he was not called “skilled.” This meant that the number of workers in the skilled class were less than a quarter of the total. The “unskilled” men, who had been farmers and fishermen, had their wages cut down to the old 70 per cent. Hell, how they’d been taken in!

For the first time, like a sudden thump on the back, they realized it.

“We’ve been made bloody fools of! We’ve been taken in nicely by the boss’s fine words!”

They stamped their feet in rage.

“If we’re going to get our wages cut 20 per cent. or 30 per cent. like this, we’d have been better at that time to have thrown in our lot with the strikers! We were damned silly!”

Handa, wearing an expression of sadness and loneliness, looked down from his cottage on the slope on the village as one surveying a ruin. There was no job for him. Of the men who formerly had worked with him, hardly one remained. Communication with them had ceased, too. He did not even know where they were or what they were doing. He had no food, but stilllstill [sic] he was reluctant to leave the village. He wanted to stay on living there for ever.

Beneath his eyes giant factories were growing up. Beside them No. 11 seemed dwarfed and old and blackened.

At the shore new land had been reclaimed. For that purpose one-half of the hill on the eastern side had been cut sheer away. The cliff-like remaining half and the red soil of the reclaimed