drinking in barber-shops, plumbing establishments, and furniture
stores.

Always it was John Barleycorn. Even a tramp, in those halcyon
days, could get most frequently drunk. I remember, inside the
prison at Buffalo, how some of us got magnificently jingled, and
how, on the streets of Buffalo after our release, another jingle
was financed with pennies begged on the main-drag.

I had no call for alcohol, but when I was with those who drank, I
drank with them. I insisted on travelling or loafing with the
livest, keenest men, and it was just these live, keen ones that
did most of the drinking. They were the more comradely men, the
more venturous, the more individual. Perhaps it was too much
temperament that made them turn from the commonplace and humdrum
to find relief in the lying and fantastic sureties of John
Barleycorn. Be that as it may, the men I liked best, desired most
to be with, were invariably to be found in John Barleycorn's
company.

In the course of my tramping over the United States I achieved a
new concept. As a tramp, I was behind the scenes of society--aye,
and down in the cellar. I could watch the machinery work. I saw
the wheels of the social machine go around, and I learned that the
dignity of manual labour wasn't what I had been told it was by the
teachers, preachers, and politicians. The men without trades were
helpless cattle. If one learned a trade, he was compelled to
belong to a union in order to work at his trade. And his union
was compelled to bully and slug the employers' unions in order to
hold up wages or hold down hours. The employers' unions like-wise