was furious whenever
it happened that Slyme had a few hours' work to do if he himself were
idle, and if ever Crass was working while Slyme was 'standing still'
the latter went about amongst the other unemployed men saying ugly
things about Crass, whom he accused of being a 'crawler'. Owen also
came in for his share of abuse and blame: most of them said that a man
like him should stick out for higher wages whether employed on special
work or not, and then he would not get any preference. But all the
same, whatever they said about each other behind each other's backs,
they were all most friendly to each other when they met face to face.

Once or twice Owen did some work--such as graining a door or writing a
sign--for one or other of his fellow workmen who had managed to secure
a little job 'on his own', but putting it all together, the
coffin-plates and other work at Rushton's and all, his earnings had not
averaged ten shillings a week for the last six weeks. Often they had
no coal and sometimes not even a penny to put into the gas meter, and
then, having nothing left good enough to pawn, he sometimes obtained a
few pence by selling some of his books to second-hand book dealers.
However, bad as their condition was, Owen knew that they were better
off than the majority of the others, for whenever he went out he was
certain to meet numbers of men whom he had worked with at different
times, who said--some of them--that they had been idle for ten, twelve,
fifteen and in some cases for twenty weeks without having earned a
shilling.

Owen used to wonder how they managed to continue to exist. Most of
them were wearing other people's cast-off clothes, hats, and boots,
which had in some instances been given to their wives by 'visiting
ladies', or by the people at whose houses their wives went to work,
charing. As for food, most of them lived on such credit as they could
get, and on the scraps of broken victuals and meat that their wives
brought home from the places they worked at. Some of them had grown-up
sons and daughters who still lived with them and whose earnings kept
their homes together, and the wives of some of them eked out a
miserable existence by letting lodgings.

The week before old Linden went into the workhouse Owen earned nothing,
and to make matters worse the grocer from whom they usually bought
their things suddenly refused to let them have any more credit. Owen
went to see him, and the man said he was