The
signs say: "Pick men wanted, section hands wanted, farm laborers wanted."
A Mexican stands woodenly against the window front. His eyes are open but
asleep. He has the air of one come from a far country who lives upon
memories.
There are others--roughly dressed exiles. Their eyes occasionally study
the signs, deciphering with difficulty the crudely chalked words on the
bulletin boards. Slav, Swede, Pole, Italian, Greek--they read in a
language foreign to them that men are wanted on the farms in the Dakotas,
in the lumber camps, on the roadbeds in Montana. Hard-handed men with
dull, seamed faces and glittering eyes--the spike-haired proletaire from a
dozen lands looking for jobs.
But this one who shuffles about in a tattered mackinaw, huge baggy
trousers frayed at the feet, this one whose giant's body swings loosely
back and forth under the signs, is a more curious exile. His Mexican
brother leaning woodenly against the window has a slow dream in his eyes.
Life is simple to his thought. It was hard for him in Mexico. And
adventure and avarice sent him northward in quest of easier ways and more
numerous comforts. Now he hunts a job on a chilly spring morning. When the
proper job is chalked up on the bulletin board he will go in and ask for
it.
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