it is not really dark in the accepted sense of the word, for a great, yellow, electric lamp sputtering overhead casts a wide circle of gold, but it is one-fifteen of a cold january morning, and this light is all the immediate light there is. the offices of the great newspaper center, the sidewalk in front of one of which constitutes the stage of this scene, are dark and silent. the great presses in every newspaper building hereabouts are getting ready to whir mightily, and if only the passers-by would cease their shuffling you could hear the noises of preparation. a little later, when they are actually in motion, you can hear them, a sound of rushing, dim and muffled, but audible—the cataract of news which the world waits for, its daily mental stimulus, not unlike the bread that is left at your door for your body.
but who are these peculiar individuals who seem to be gathering here at this time in the morning? you did not notice any one a few minutes ago, but now there are three or four over there discussing the reasons for the present hard times, and here in the shadow of this great arch of a door are three or four more. and now you look about you and they are coming from all directions, slipping in out of the shadow toward this light, where sits a fat old irish woman beside an empty news-stand waiting to tend it, for as yet there is nothing on it. they225 all seem at first to be men of one type, small and underweight and gaunt. but a little later you realize that they are not so much alike in height and weight as you first thought, and of differing nationalities. but they are all cold, though, that is certain, and a little impatient. they are constantly shifting and turning and looking at the city hall clock, where its yellow face shows the hour, or looking down the street, and sometimes murmuring, but not much. there is very little said.
“what is all the trouble?” you ask of some available bystander, who ought to be fairly en rapport with the situation, since he has been standing here for some time.
“nothin’,” he retorts. “they’re waitin’ for the mornin’ papers. they’re lookin’ to see which can git to a job first.”
“oh!” you exclaim, a great light breaking. “so they’re here to get a good start. they wait all night, eh? that’s pretty tough, isn’t it?”
“oh, i don’t know. they’re mostly swedes and germans.” this last as though these two nationalities, and no doubt some others, were beyond the need of human consideration. “they’re waiters and cooks and order men and dishwashers. there’s some other kinds, too, but they’re mostly waiters.”
“would you say that that old man over there—that fellow with a white beard—was a waiter?”
“aw, naw! he ain’t no waiter. i don’t know what he is—pan-handler, maybe. they wouldn’t have the likes of him. it’s these other fellows that are waiters, these young ones.”
226 you look, and they are young in a way, lean, with thin lips and narrow chests and sallow faces, a little shabby, all of them, and each has a roll of something wrapped up in a newspaper or a brown paper and tucked under his arm—an apron, maybe.
you begin speculating for yourself, and, with the aid of your friend to supply occasional points, you piece the whole thing together. this is really a very great, hard, cold city, and these men are creatures at the bottom of the ladder, temporarily, anyhow. and these columns of ads in the successful morning papers attract them as a chance. and they come here thus early in the cold in order to get a good start on a given job before any one else can get ahead of them. first come, first served.
and while you are waiting, speculating, another creature edges near you. he is not quite so prosperous looking as the last one you talked to; he seems thinner, more emaciated.
“take a look at that, boss,” he says, opening his palm and shoving something bright toward you. it looks like gold.
“no,” you answer nervously. (you have been held up before.) “no, i don’t want to look at it.”
“take a look at it,” he insists.
“no,” you retort irritably, but you do it in a half-hearted, objecting way and see that it is a gold ring with an initial carved in the seal plate.
the men in the dark
he closes his thin hand and puts it back in his pocket.227 he is inclined to go away, and then another idea strikes him.
“are you lookin’ fer a job?” he asks.
“no.”
“ain’t you a cook?”
“no.”
“gee! i thought you was some swell chef—they come here now and then.”
it is a doubtful compliment but better than nothing. you soften a little.
“i’m a waiter,” he confides, now that he has your momentary interest. “i am, i mean, when i’m in good health. i’m run down some now. the best i can get is dishwashing now. but i am a waiter, and i’ve been an order clerk. there’s nothin’ much to say of this bunch, though. they all work for the cheap joints. saturday nights they gits drunk mostly, and if they’re not there on the dot sunday they’re gone. the boss gits a new one. then they come here sunday night or monday.”
you are inclined to agree that this description fits in pretty well with your observation of a number of them, but what of these others who look like family men, who look worried and harried?
“sure, there’s lots others,” prompts your adviser. “there’s three columns every day callin’ for painters. there’s a column most every day of printers. people paints houses all the year round. there’s general help wanted. there’s carpenters. it gits some. cooks and waiters and dishwashers in the big pull, though.”
you have been wondering if this is really true, but228 it sounds plausible enough. these men are obviously, in a great many cases, cooks and waiters. their search calls for an early start, for the restaurants and hotels usually keep open all night. it may be.
and all the time you have been wondering why the papers do not come. it seems a shame that these men should have to stand here so long. there’s a great crowd now, between two and three hundred. a policeman is tramping up and down, keeping an open passageway. he is not in any friendly mood.
“stand back,” he orders angrily. “i’m tellin’ ye fer the last time, now!”
a great passageway opens.
now of a sudden comes a boy running with a great bundle of the most successful morning paper, a most staggering load. actually the crowd looks as though it would seize him and tear his bundle away from him, but instead it only closes in quickly behind. when he reaches the irish woman’s stand there is a great struggling, grabbing circle formed. “the ——,” is the cry. “gimme a ——,” and for the space of a half-dozen minutes a thriving, exciting business is done in morning papers. then these men run with their papers like dogs run with a bone. they hurry, each to some neighboring light, and glance up and down the columns. sometimes they mark something, and then you see them hurry on again. they have picked their prospect.
it is a pitiful spectacle from one point of view, a decidedly grim one from another. your dishwasher (or ex-waiter) confides that most of these positions, apart from tips, pay only five dollars a week and board. and229 he admits that the board is vile. while you are talking you recognize some gentlemanly newspaper man, well-salaried, taking his belated way home. what a contrast! what a far cry!
“and say,” says your dishwasher friend, “i thought i’d git a job to-night. i thought somebody’d buy this ring. it’ll bring $1.75 in the pawnshop in the mornin’. i ain’t got carfare or i wouldn’t mention it. i usually soaks it early in the week and gits it out saturday. i’ll soak it to-morrow, and git another chance to-morrow night.”
what a story! what a predicament!
you go down in your pocket and produce a quarter. you buy him a paper. “on your way,” you say cheerily—but the misery! the depths! to think that any one of us should come to this!
as he goes you watch the others going, and then the silence settles down and the night. there is no sense of traffic here now, no great need of light. the old irish woman sinks to the dismal task of waiting, for morning, i presume. now and then some passing pedestrian will buy a paper, but not often. but these others—they have gone in the direction of the four winds of heaven; they are applying at the shabby doors of restaurants, in brooklyn, manhattan, the bronx, hoboken, staten island; they are sitting on stoops, holding their own at shop doors. they have the right to ask first, the right to be first, because they are first—noble privilege.
and you and i—well, we turn in our dreams and rest. the great world wags on. our allotted portion is not this. we are not of these men in the dark.