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. Table-cloths 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 big 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.

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 labourer I have eaten a breakfast for
twelvepence such as the British labourer 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, I would 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 m