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fight for better treatment. The job all sandwich men covet
is distributing handbills, which is paid for at the same rate.
When you see a man distributing handbills you can do him
a good turn by taking one, for he goes off duty when he has
distributed all his bills.
Meanwhile we went on with the lodging-house life—a
squalid, eventless life of crushing boredom. For days to-
gether there was nothing to do but sit in the underground
kitchen, reading yesterday’s newspaper, or, when one
could get hold of it, a back number of the UNION JACK.
It rained a great deal at this time, and everyone who came
in Steamed, so that the kitchen stank horribly. One’s only
excitement was the periodical tea-and-two-slices. I do not
know how many men are living this life in London—it must
be thousands at the least. As to Paddy, it was actually the
best life he had known for two years past. His interludes
from tramping, the times when he had somehow laid hands
on a few shillings, had all been like this; the tramping it-
self had been slightly worse. Listening to his whimpering
voice—he was always whimpering when he was not eating
—one realized what torture unemployment must be to him.
People are wrong when they think that an unemployed man
only worries about losing his wages; on the contrary, an il-
literate man, with the work habit in his bones, needs work
even more than he needs money. An educated man can put
up with enforced idleness, which is one of the worst evils
of poverty. But a man like Paddy, with no means of filling
up time, is as miserable out of work as a dog on the chain.
That is why it is such nonsense to pretend that those who

1 Down and Out in Paris and London