第54章

Coffee-houses and Doss-houses.

Why should we be packed, head and tail, like canned sardines?

-ROBERT BLATCHFORD.

ANOTHER PHRASE GONE GLIMMERING, shorn of romance and tradition and all that goes to make phrases worth keeping! For me, henceforth, 'coffee-house' will possess anything but an agreeable connotation.

Over on the other side of the world, the mere mention of the word was sufficient to conjure up whole crowds of its historic frequenters, and to send trooping through my imagination endless groups of wits and dandies, pamphleteers and bravos, and bohemians of Grub Street.

But here, on this side of the world, alas and alack, the very name is a misnomer.Coffee-house: a place where people drink coffee.Not at all.You cannot obtain coffee in such a place for love or money.True, you may call for coffee, and you will have brought you something in a cup purporting to be coffee, and you will taste it and be disillusioned, for coffee it certainly is not.

And what is true of the coffee is true of the coffee-house.

Working-men, in the main, frequent these places, and greasy, dirty places they are, without one thing about them to cherish decency in a man or put self-respect into him.Tablecloths and napkins are unknown.A man eats in the midst of the debris left by his predecessor, and dribbles his own scraps about him and on the floor.

In rush times, in such places, I have positively waded through the muck and mess that covered the floor and I have managed to eat because I was abominably hungry and capable of eating anything.

This seems to be the normal condition of the working-man, from the zest with which he addresses himself to the board.Eating is a necessity, and there are no frills about it.He brings in with him a primitive voraciousness, and, I am confident, carries away with him a fairly healthy appetite.When you see such a man, on his way to work in the morning, order a pint of tea, which is no more tea than it is ambrosia, pull a hunk of dry bread from his pocket, and wash the one down with the other, depend upon it, that man has not the right sort of stuff in his belly, nor enough of the wrong sort of stuff, to fit him for his day's work.And further, depend upon it, he and a thousand of his kind will not turn out the quantity or quality of work that a thousand men will who have eaten heartily of meat and potatoes and drunk coffee that is coffee.

A pint of tea, kipper (or bloater), and 'two slices' (bread and butter) are a very good breakfast for a London workman.I have looked in vain for him to order a five-penny or six-penny steak (the cheapest to be had); while, when I ordered one for myself, I have usually had to wait till the proprietor could send out to the nearest butchershop and buy one.

As a vagrant in the 'Hobo' of a California jail, I have been served better food and drink than the London workman receives in his coffee-houses; while as an American laborer I have eaten a breakfast for twelvepence such as the British laborer would not dream of eating.

Of course, he will pay only three or four pence for his; which is, however, as much as I paid, for I would be earning six shillings to his two or two and a half.On the other hand, though, and in return, Iwould turn out an amount of work in the course of the day that would put to shame the amount he turned out.So there are two sides to it.

The man with the high standard of living will always do more work and better than the man with the low standard of living.

There is a comparison which sailormen make between the English and American merchant services.In an English ship, they say, it is poor grub, poor pay, and easy work; in an American ship, good grub, good pay, and hard work.And this is applicable to the working populations of both countries.The ocean greyhounds have to pay for speed and steam, and so does the workman.But if the workman is not able to pay for it, he will not have the speed and steam, that is all.

The proof of it is when the English workman comes to America.He will lay more bricks in New York than he will in London, still more bricks in St.Louis, and still more bricks when he gets to San Francisco.* His standard of living has been rising all the time.

* The San Francisco bricklayer receives twenty shillings per day, and at present is on strike for twenty-four shillings.

Early in the morning, along the streets frequented by workmen on the way to work, many women sit on the sidewalk with sacks of bread beside them.No end of workmen purchase these, and eat them as they walk along.They do not even wash the dry bread down with the tea to be obtained for a penny in the coffee-houses.It is incontestable that a man is not fit to begin his day's work on a meal like that; and it is equally incontestable that the loss will fall upon his employer and upon the nation.For some time, now, statesmen have been crying, 'Wake up, England!' It would show more hard-headed common sense if they changed the tune to 'Feed up, England!'

Not only is the worker poorly fed, but he is filthily fed.I have stood outside a butchershop and watched a horde of speculative housewives turning over the trimmings and scraps and shreds of beef and mutton- dog-meat in the States.I would not vouch for the clean fingers of these housewives, no more than I would vouch for the cleanliness of the single rooms in which many of them and their families lived; yet they raked, and pawed, and scraped the mess about in their anxiety to get the worth of their coppers.I kept my eye on one particularly offensive-looking bit of meat, and followed it through the clutches of over twenty women, till it fell to the lot of a timid-appearing little woman whom the butcher bulldozed into taking it.All day long this heap of scraps was added to and taken away from, the dust and dirt of the street falling upon it, flies settling on it, and the dirty fingers turning it over and over.