I'm sitting in the city-free employment bureau.

It's the women's section.

We've been sitting here now for four hours.

We sit here every day waiting for a job.

There are no jobs.

Most of us have had no breakfast.

Some have had scant rations for over a year.

Hunger makes a human being lapse into a state of lethargy,

especially city hunger.

Is there any place else in the world where a human being is supposed

to go hungry amidst plenty without an outcry, without protest?

Were only the boldest steel or kill for bread,

and the timid crawl the streets.

Hunger, like the beak of a terrible bird at the vitals.

We sit looking at the floor.

No one dares think of the coming winter.

There are only a few more days of summer.

Everyone is anxious to get work, to lay up something

for that long siege of bitter cold.

But there is no work.

Sitting in the room, we all know it.

That's why we don't talk much.

...