There'd be no loafers in the world if each man found the thing that
he could do best; but the only work I happen to want to do is useless
--so I have to give it up. To-morrow I'll be a day-laborer."
"What is it like--exactly?"
"I get up at six," he said. "I have a lunch-basket to carry with me,
which is aristocratic and no advantage. The other workmen have tin
buckets, and tin buckets are better. I leave the house at six-thirty,
and I'm at work in my overalls at seven. I have an hour off at noon,
and work again from one till five."
"But the work itself?"
"It wasn't muscularly exhausting--not at all. They couldn't give me
a heavier job because I wasn't good enough."
"But what will you do? I want to know."
"When I left," said Bibbs, "I was 'on' what they call over there
a 'clipping-machine,' in one of the 'by-products' departments, and
that's what I'll be sent back to."
"But what is it?" she insisted.
Bibbs explained. "It's very simple and very easy. I feed long strips
of zinc into a pair of steel jaws, and the jaws bite the zinc into
little circles. All I have to do is to see that the strip goes into
the jaws at a certain angle--and yet I was a very bad hand at it.
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