In behalf of Sir Walter's plant let us look into the case of Martin Burney.  
They were constructing the Speedway along the west bank of the Harlem River. The grub-boat of Dennis Corrigan, sub-contractor, was to a tree on the bank. Twenty-two men belonging to the little green island there at the sinew-cracking labour. One among them, who in the kitchen of the grub-boat was of the race of the Goths. Over them all stood the Corrigan, them like the captain of a crew. He paid them so little that most of the gang, work as they might, earned little more than food and tobacco; many of them were in debt to him. Corrigan boarded them all in the grub-boat, and gave them good grub, for he got it back in work.
 
Martin Burney was furthest behind of all. He was a little man, all muscles and hands and feet, with a gray-red, stubbly beard. He was too light for the work, which would have the capacity of a steam .
 
The work was hard. Besides that, the banks of the river were humming with mosquitoes. As a child in a dark room fixes his regard on the pale light of a comforting window, these toilers watched the sun that brought around the one hour of the day that tasted less bitter. After the sundown supper they would together on the river bank, and send the mosquitoes and back from the of twenty-three pipes. Thus socially banded against the , they out of the hour a few well-smoked drops from the cup of joy.
 
Each week Burney grew deeper in debt. Corrigan kept a small stock of goods on the boat, which he sold to the men at prices that brought him no loss. Burney was a good customer at the tobacco counter. One sack when he went to work in the morning and one when he came in at night, so much was his account daily. Burney was something of a . Yet it was not true that he ate his meals with a pipe in his mouth, which had been said of him. The little man was not discontented. He had plenty to eat, plenty of tobacco, and a to curse; so why should not he, an Irishman, be well satisfied?
 
One morning as he was starting with the others for work he stopped at the pine counter for his usual sack of tobacco.
 
"There's no more for ye," said Corrigan. "Your account's closed. Ye are a losing investment. No, not even tobaccy, my son. No more tobaccy on account. If ye want to work on and eat, do so, but the smoke of ye has all . 'Tis my advice that ye hunt a new job."
 
"I have no tobaccy to smoke in my pipe this day, Mr. Corrigan," said Burney, not quite understanding that such a thing could happen to him.
 
"Earn it," said Corrigan, "and then buy it."
 
Burney stayed on. He knew of no other job. At first he did not realize that tobacco had got to be his father and mother, his confessor and sweetheart, and wife and child.
 
For three days he managed to fill his pipe from the other men's sacks, and then they shut him off, one and all. They told him, rough but friendly, that of all things in the world tobacco must be quickest forthcoming to a fellow-man desiring it, but that beyond the temporary need requisition upon the store of a comrade is pressed with great danger to friendship.
 
Then the blackness of the pit arose and filled the heart of Burney. Sucking the of his deceased dudheen, he staggered through his duties with his barrowful of stones and dirt, feeling for the first time that the curse of Adam was upon him. Other men of a pleasure might have recourse to other delights, but Burney had only two comforts in life. One was his pipe, the other was an ecstatic hope that there would be no Speedways to build on the other side of Jordan.
 
At meal times he would let the other men go first into the grub-boat, and then he would go down on his hands and knees, fiercely upon the ground where they had been sitting, trying to find some stray of tobacco. Once he down the river bank and filled his pipe with dead leaves. At the first whiff of the smoke he in the direction of the boat and put the finest curse he knew on Corrigan—one that began with the first Corrigans born on earth and ended with the Corrigans that shall hear the of Gabriel blow. He began to hate Corrigan with all his shaking nerves and soul. Even murder occurred to him in a vague sort of way. Five days he went without the taste of tobacco—he who had smoked all day and thought the night misspent in which he had not for a pipeful or two under the bedclothes.
 
One day a man stopped at the boat to say that there was work to be had in the Bronx Park, where a large number of labourers were required in making some improvements.
 
After dinner Burney walked thi............