street before a boarding-house. I asked for the job of carrying
in the coal. There were two tons of it. I toted it in and was
paid a dollar. New Orleans was a popular winter resort where
northerners came to escape the severe cold of the North Atlantic
States. I was given the job of yard-man in this boarding-house. I
carried in groceries, peeled potatoes, scrubbed the kitchen floor
and built fires each evening in the guests' rooms. Each room had
a grate, and I carried up kindling and coal for all of them. For
this work I received a dollar a day, with two meals (dinner and
supper) and was permitted to carry away from the kitchen all the
cooked food that remained after the guests had eaten. This
privilege had grown out of the custom of the colored help in the
South having their "man" to feed. I had several men to feed. My
"gang" was still looking for work and not finding any. Times were
desperate. For five cents a man could get a glass of beer and
floor room to sleep on in a lodging-house for homeless men. This
was called a "Five Cent Flop" house. My pals were not able at
times to raise the five cents a day to buy sleeping quarters. It
was late fall and too cold to sleep in the "jungle" down by the
levee. The poor fellows were able to stave off starvation by
visiting various free lunches during the day. Every night I
arrived with my dollar, and that meant beer and beds for a score.
I also brought along a flour sack half full of biscuits, cold
pancakes, corn bread, chicken necks and wings and scraps of
roasts and steaks. These hungry men, with their schooners of
beer, made a feast of these scraps. My loyalty in coming every
night and giving them everything I could scrape together touched
them deeply. They regarded me as deserving special honor, and
while they believed in democracy as a general proposition, they
voted that it would be carrying equality too far if they