or dossing,
or sleeping, is the hardest problem they have to face, harder even than
that of food. The inclement weather and the harsh laws are mainly
responsible for this, while the men themselves ascribe their homelessness
to foreign immigration, especially of Polish and Russian Jews, who take
their places at lower wages and establish the sweating system.

By seven o'clock we were called away to bathe and go to bed. We stripped
our clothes, wrapping them up in our coats and buckling our belts about
them, and deposited them in a heaped rack and on the floor--a beautiful
scheme for the spread of vermin. Then, two by two, we entered the
bathroom. There were two ordinary tubs, and this I know: the two men
preceding had washed in that water, we washed in the same water, and it
was not changed for the two men that followed us. This I know; but I am
also certain that the twenty-two of us washed in the same water.

I did no more than make a show of splashing some of this dubious liquid
at myself, while I hastily brushed it off with a towel wet from the
bodies of other men. My equanimity was not restored by seeing the back
of one poor wretch a mass of blood from attacks of vermin and retaliatory
scratching.

A shirt was handed me--which I could not help but wonder how many other
men had worn; and with a couple of blankets under my arm I trudged off to
the sleeping apartment. This was a long, narrow room, traversed by two
low iron rails. Between these rails were stretched, not hammocks, but
pieces of canvas, six feet long and less than two feet wide. These were
the beds, and they were six inches apart and about eight inches above the
floor. The chief difficulty was that the head was somewhat higher than
the feet, which caused the body constantly to slip down. Being slung to
the same rails, when one man moved, no matter how slightly, the rest were
set rocking; and whenever I dozed somebody was sure to struggle back to
the position from which he had slipped, and arouse me again.

Many hours passed before I won to sleep. It was only seven in the
evening, and the voices of children, in shrill outcry, playing in the
street, continued till nearly midnight. The smell was frightful and
sickening, while my imagination broke loose, and my skin crept and
crawled till I was nearly frantic. Grunting, groaning, and snoring arose
like the sounds emitted by some sea monster, and several times, afflicted
by nightmare, one or ano