struggling against fate; for as paper money advanced in value and
approached to gold, so, as a general rule, must the price of everything
decline that was paid for in that paper money, including wages, the price
of labor.
The men were not literally starved out, it seems; for one interested
says, “I heard of no miners that were suffering for provisions, though
some of them were pretty hard up. The store-keepers took the miners’
side, because it was their interest to do so. The bigger pay the miner
got, the more he had to spend in the stores.”
Of course the time must have come when the tradesmen could no longer give
credit, and we readily infer that that point must have been nearly or
entirely reached when the men had been out near six months.
During this period families were, of course, much restricted. They
could probably get along with no new clothing, or but little; and the
store-keepers trusted them for flour, tea, sugar, tobacco, and the
other little _necessaries_ of life. Such, too, as had lots, could raise
potatoes, cabbage, etc., but some of them became deeply involved in debt.
However, the times had been so good that probably at least half the men
had means to support themselves for a little time, and they grasped at
any work they could find anywhere. As the strike began in December,
however, the amount of work must have been small. Had not the other
anthracite regions become involved, their comrades might have sent them
funds, or given them a share of work; but this was impossible. The funds
of the Miners’ Union, the W. B. A., were very small. They were unable to
support the men in such a time. Nor were they supported by the public.
Says a friend, “Not one miner in this region went to the poor-house,
nor do I believe that one applied to the commissioners of the poor for
out-door assistance. They would not have thought of such a thing, for
they believed that the sympathies of the commissioners were with their
employers.”
About once a month a committee would call upon Mr. ⸺, the agent of the ⸺
Company (and doubtless upon the agents of the others also) and inquire
whether the company would grant them a basis on the former prices, but
they effected nothing.
The Irishmen were poorer, and they were sooner ready to yield. At length
a gentleman of Scranton induced thirty men to “break away from the
Union,” and to go to work in a mine belonging to a company smaller than
the three mentioned. These men were almost entirely Irish. They went
to work daily about seven in the morning, returning about five in the
evening, carrying arms, and were accompanied by soldiers, and led by
their employer.
When the news spread among the miners that a body of men had gone to work
in a certain spot, the miners would gather upon the way to see who these
were, and the on-looking crowd was swelled by boys, and perhaps by women.
As the men who had yielded made their appearance, the cry arose among the
spectators, “Here come the blacklegs!”—_i.e._, the turncoats or traitors.
One evening as these men were thus returning along the street in Hyde
Park, it is said that a boy on the street threw a stone. One of the men
attacked turned round, and, discharging his musket, shot two men through
the body with the same ball, and killed them instantly.
At least one of these men was a miner, and was or had been a Methodist
local preacher; the other was going to get medicine for a sick child.
Both were Welshmen. There was immediately an immense excitement. While
the man who fired the shot was being taken to the magistrates, some one
cried out, “Kill him!” but others waved them back, saying, “Let the law
do him justice.”
The magistrate, a Welshman, committed him to jail at Wilkesbarre,
whence he was bailed out, and when brought to trial was defended by the
companies, was acquitted, and lives peaceably in the neighborhood now. I
tell the tale as it was told to me.
So the men gave in. This bloody scene and the ensuing funerals probably
broke the doughty spirit of the Welshmen. They gave in and went to work
in the latter part of May, not entirely six months from the outbreak
of the contest. They began at eighty-six cents, the price which the
companies had fixed; but on the 1st of June their pay was raised to
ninety-three cents.
Can strikes be prevented? In speaking to a miner about the great
suspension, I asked whether it would not be better for the company and
the men to meet and settle these matters.
“It could not be done,” he answered. The miners do not seem to have any
desire to buy into the stock of the companies. Is it for fear that, as a
miner’s wife said, “the big fishes would eat the little fishes up?”
But if the miner does not thus co-operate with his employers, or in
the manner that the poorest sailor on a whaling vessel once did with
the owners, the principle of joint-stock is not unknown to them. An
intelligent man, once a miner, tells me that all working men are now
aspiring to form co-operative associations for the purpose of carrying on
mining and iron-works themselves. There are iron-mills on this system, he
said, at Danville, and a number of furnaces and rolling-mills in Ohio.
These are on the same plan as the renowned works at Rochdale, England,
that have been in successful operation for many years.
There is, too, a co-operative store at Hyde Park, Scranton. This store
has been in operation for several years, and pays stockholders from
twelve to fifteen per cent. on stock and purchase. The majority of the
stockholders are Welsh, and nearly all are miners.
IRISH FARMERS.
In 1881 I spent four weeks in Ireland, principally in the south, in the
county Cork. Desiring to learn the condition of the farmer who himself
follows the plough, I inquired among various classes of people. I boarded
four days with a farmer, and about as long at a castle; down in the
southwest I talked with a citizen who had been boycotted; travelling
third-class on railways, I conversed with other passengers; in Dublin
with fellow-boarders; in London with a prominent Irish politician. Of
these interviews I took notes, so that I am not obliged to depend alone
on memory for my simple story. I try to give conversations, but must
allow the reader to draw inferences.
For many years I have known farmers living in comfort and accumulating
property by the labor of their own hands upon their own soil. Such are
Quaker farmers in Chester County and “Pennsylvania Dutch” in Lancaster.
In Ireland I wished to visit a similar class. But I found no one who owns
the land he ploughs, or ploughs that which he owns.
I was assured in Philadelphia by persons knowing Ireland that I could not
find the house of a working farmer in which I would be willing to live.
This discouraged me, but by means of introductions from two or three
young women hying at domestic service, I obtained a good opening into the
land. One gave me a letter to her confessor in Cork, whom we will call
the “Riverend Lawrence O’Byrne.” I found him intelligent and genial; in
person rather tall and thin but with a color in his cheek. He was at a
loss to recommend me to any working farmer’s house, saying that I should
live on potatoes and skimmed milk; but I thought that I could live so for
some days if those people did all their lives.
In further conversation, Mr. O’Byrne lamented the degradation caused by
liquor, and declared that the bulk of the Irish people cannot be induced
to take any interest in lyceums or intellectual culture.
Nearly thus he described to me the aim of the farmers in the present
agitation. It is fifty years or more since Griffith, an agent of the
English government, made a valuation of Irish lands. Since then rents
have risen in some cases one hundred per cent., and the Land League is
trying to reduce them to Griffith’s valuation.
When tenants are evicted, others are forbidden to take them at the price
demanded, and the evicted are supported by contributions to the Land
League. I myself call it an agricultural strike.
Mr. O’Byrne says that there is much competition in renting farms, no
other business being open to the people. This confirms the opinion of a
publisher in Philadelphia, who had attributed the state of Irish affairs
to the want of manufactures.
* * * * *
Mr. O’Byrne kindly made inquiry for me, and I found a farmer willing
to take a boarder. To see him I went by rail to a certain station. Near
by I entered a humble dwelling, where a man was working at his trade,
besides being a petty government officer. He talked pleasantly on Irish
affairs, and said that some landlords have granted a reduction in rent
of twenty-five per cent. I repeated what an editor in New York had
said of the present condition of Irish affairs,—that bad harvests, the
competition of American beef and mutton, and the consequent decrease in
the value of real estate had made the farmers unable to pay their rent.
The Irishman admitted that American meat is much cheaper than theirs,
but said that it had not brought down the price of their own. He said
that four or five landlords and agents had been killed; at this a woman
present smiled; and a man added that it is a pity there were not more.
This was the only sanguinary remark that I heard a poor Irishman make.
At the railroad station the train from the west was behind time, and
the agent suspected disturbances. When it came it was mostly filled
with soldiers, who called out for water; but who reported no immediate
disturbance. At this station I was met by the farmer and his wife with
whom I was to lodge, who took me home in their cart. I call him Maurice
Collins. He was not very poor for an Irish cultivator. He was doubtless
considered quite fortunate in owning a horse and cart, even if the cart
had no box and no seats, but was simply a bed or frame. Upon it lay
a great bag of corn-meal, upon which sat Mrs. Collins and myself. I
steadied myself down-hill with one arm at her waist, while my right hand
grasped a projection of the cart. I expressed surprise at the number of
ruined and abandoned dwellings, for we were within ten miles of one of
the largest towns in Ireland. Collins said that farms once separate have
been thrown together. When the population of a country falls thirty-seven
per cent. in about thirty-four years, or from over eight millions to
about five, it is not strange that abandoned houses are found when
built like these, of stone. Dwellings of mud and straw are more readily
demolished. Collins’s house was on rather a sterile hill. To reach it we
rose above the lower and more fertile ground. On our arrival a chair was
brought out to enable us to alight from the cart. On entering the house
we were followed by a young man, who staggered under the weight of the
great five-bushel sack on which we had sat in the wagon.
There were twelve in the family,—six boys, one girl at home and one away,
the old aunt, and the domestic. The living room had an uneven floor of
earth. Within the front door stood the slop-barrel. A dresser of dishes
stood on the left, and beyond it there was a red-painted, two-storied
hen-coop. A hen and chickens occupied the lower story, and a setting
hen the upper one. A second door faced the front door. It generally
stood open, discovering a little muddy yard. A great settle or couch of
wood stood on the same side of the room. Beyond it, on a low seat, sat
a little fair, weak-eyed old woman, the aunt. She sat beside a small
fire on the hearth, holding the baby. With her left hand she turned a
crank and wheel, which by some invisible agency created an underground
draught to kindle the fire. The fire was generally of coals. It bore no
proportion to the fireplace, which occupied a large part of the third
side of the room. I saw the girl hang over the fire a large Dutch oven,
called here a bastible. It was a round iron vessel with a lid. On its top
she kindled a fire of furze, and hung the bastible to bake the large cake
within, made of flour not fully screened, sour milk, and soda.
At nightfall the barefooted little ones gathered to the blaze, although
it was in the month of June. The babe in arms was Tim, the three-year-old
Norah, and the five-year-old, in trousers surmounted by a red woollen
frock and blue apron, was Dennis. At one end of the long fireplace
stood the heavy cradle. A steep staircase, almost like a ladder with
a railing, led to the rooms above, for this house, roofed with slate
instead of thatch, had a loft with a board floor. Wet weather makes the
uneven earthen floors inconvenient. The water gathers in little pools.
The door to my room was at the foot of the staircase. There were only two
apartments on the ground-floor.
The fourth side of the apartment was lighted by a small window and
the doorway through which we entered the house. There were only two
windows down-stairs, one in this room and one in mine. They were little
iron-barred windows. I thought that they might be taxed, but I was
mistaken. Collins told me that the glass came from England. They used to
have glass-manufactories in this country.
I had taken tea before my arrival, and Mrs. Collins gave me some milk.
She and her husband had been to Cork, where, she said, they had a cup of
tea and a penny bun at a baker’s. (The penny is about two cents.) In the
evening we had a good talk. I commented on the nice hen-house standing in
the corner, and Mrs. Collins told me that they had lost several chickens
by the fox. “And do you still have foxes in Ireland?” I asked, in some
surprise.
“We do,” she replied.
“And that is what the gentlemen hunt?”
“It is,” she said.
“And can you kill the foxes?” I inquired.
“No, ma’am,” was the reply.
This I afterward thought must be an error, as foxes are vermin; but a
gentleman born in the north of Ireland has told me that they would be
evicted for killing foxes. Sometimes hunting clubs pay for poultry killed
by foxes.
In the evening I spoke of the sun’s setting so late and our being so
far north, and asked the eldest son, a youth of fourteen, whether he
had studied geography. He said he had, but his mother told me that he
had been obliged to leave school at eleven, and her manner seemed sad
and disapproving. There are no free schools in Ireland like ours. The
poorest citizens need not pay in the national schools, but others must.
A gentleman in Dublin, who publishes a school journal, told me that
he doubted whether these schools would ever become entirely free to
the public, like those in my own State. He had never heard that such a
movement was contemplated.
In further conversation Mrs. Collins told me that they had lost seven
cows in eighteen months, and that they were nearly broken down. They had
to incur some debt to replace them, and they must meet the rent or be
thrown upon the world. Their lease would expire in about six years. Do
not these misfortunes make them dwell very near to the Divine Father, in
humble submission and prayer?
About ten o’clock in the evening the wooden table was put before the
fireplace. The old aunt had gone to bed. Collins was in one end of the
fireplace, a boy asleep in the other, and the eldest slept on the settle.
Mrs. Collins made tea and put a bowl of white sugar on the table. She
told me that sugar cost about five cents a pound (two and a halfpence).
They cut pieces off of the great cake baked in the Dutch oven, and ate
their supper without any of the precious butter, which must go to market.
Little Norah had given a low laugh when her mother handed her a bit of
warm cake without anything spread on it. Mr. and Mrs. Collins had milk in
their tea. The tea cost about forty cents a pound. Collins helped himself
quite freely to the cheap and nutritious sugar, one of the blessings
which the poor man owes to free trade.
Collins and his wife gave up their own room to me. It was the other
room on the ground-floor. It also had an earthen floor, with perhaps
the addition of a little cement, but it was not level. There I slept,
and here were set my simple meals, more luxurious, however, than their
own. Some of the dishes were of china, which belonged to Collins’s
grandmother. I had plenty of milk, eggs, butter, tea, and baker’s
bread. They gave me goat’s milk, richer than cow’s milk, for tea. For
me especially Mrs. Collins procured meat, a bit of jowl, but I am not
partial to it. They did not, however, go to the extravagance of eating
it themselves. I was told of a farmer’s family who had jowl and cabbage
for a Sunday dinner. A watch was set for the agent, lest, seeing such
evidences of prosperity, he might raise the rent. Collins and his wife
seldom ate meat. He told me that he had two eggs in the morning and the
mistress one. They raised turkeys. Twenty-four were running with one hen.
The servant fed them with a mixture of nettles, corn mush, and thick
milk, but she said they scarcely ever ate a turkey even at Christmas.
In the morning, at breakfast, Mrs. Collins had some cold mush or
stirabout cut up and boiled in sheep’s milk. This saved bread and tea. I
observed one day within the back door, and by the chicken-coop, a little
trough with corn-meal. There seemed to be always food there. The chickens
came in and helped themselves. Seeing a fowl eating, I said to the aunt,
“That rooster ought to be fat.” She did not understand me, and I tried
again:
“That cock ought to be fat, he eats so much.”
“He do ate a dale, God bless him,” she said. She meant “prosper him,” I
think. Some neighbors visited the family one morning, and from my room I
heard earnest talk. They spoke of the rumored arrest of Father Murphy,
which had caused much excitement. One man came in who was full of talk of
the Cork races on the preceding day. At first, Mrs. Collins allowed him
to think that they were present, but they went to sell butter, and did
not go to the race-ground.
The girl swept the earthen floor with a bunch of twigs without a handle.
I mention these little things to show the poverty of the country. They
had no almanacs at Collins’s and no clock, except a Connecticut one,
which did not run. Collins once intimated that it was painful to have
such a poor harness for his horse.
One day I walked over to the school. I passed a house licensed to sell
beer and spirits to be drunk on the premises. It was whitewashed, and
looked better than most of the farm-houses. The boys told me that tea and
sugar could be bought there. Bread was sold, but I could buy no sticks of
candy for the children. A carpenter-shop and a blacksmith’s forge stood
near this public-house, but I saw no country stores like ours at home.
The Collins family carried water some distance uphill from a spring. This
part of the country is supplied from springs. They had excellent roads,
apparently macadamized, and free from tolls. When I spoke in Cork of the
great cost of such roads I was told that they were probably made after
the famine, when the government gave laborers employment. The roads,
however, seemed deserted. Once I saw a man on horseback, and occasionally
market carts were seen, but of plain carriages, like those of the farmers
in Eastern Pennsylvania, I remember none. Poverty hangs like a cloud over
the land. Yet the people seem honest. The servant-girl at Collins’s said
to me, “Nothing do ever be taken.” I wished to know whether it was safe
to leave my towels to dry on furze bushes near the road. Afterward, in
a gentleman’s house,—a gentleman who lived in a disturbed section, and
whose tenants were not paying rent,—I was told that they would not be
afraid to have plate in the house; the people there were honest.
Collins and his wife were trying to better their condition by going to
a market-town and buying butter, which she brought home and reworked
and packed into firkins to sell in Cork. This consumed so much of their
time that it was hard for me to see much profit in it. They may have
received five dollars a week more than the butter cost them. Mrs. Collins
was pleased in telling me of one firkin or tub that brought the highest
market price. But during their absence the elder boys were left alone at
the farm-work. Nor did I see the great pressure of labor found among our
Pennsylvania German farmers. This may be in part owing to open winters
in Ireland, which enable the former to work the year round, in part to
the fact that the patient, ox-like labor of the German is not a trait of
the Irishman, and partly to a national disregard of time, producing such
a proverb as “Hours were made for slaves.” When I apologized for having
talked so long to a poor man and his wife, she answered, “Sure, many a
year we’ll rest in the grave.” Calling on my friend Collins and his wife
before I left the county, I found they had gone with their horse to the
funeral of a much-respected neighbor, and as they were so long absent,
had doubtless accompanied the funeral to the place of interment, twenty
miles. A manufacturer in the county Cork said that the Irish girls in the
mills are not greedy enough. They would rather have less wages and more
play. They were not indolent, but a bit of fun would call them off. A
Quaker lady in Cork said to me, “None of the Irish are thrifty. They do
not value their time.” And afterward, “They are a thrifty people in the
north. They make use of their time.” She herself was born in Ireland,
but when she spoke of the Irish she did not mean to include herself.
When any one called the Irish lazy, I replied that they did not seem so
in America. They left their temperate climate, came to our country, and
constructed railroads under our broiling suns. I heard in Ireland that
girls who go to America say, “If we had worked as hard in Ireland as we
do in America, we would have been well off there.”
I spoke of Mr. and Mrs. Collins’s drinking tea at supper. Once when they
were absent, Mary, the servant, came into my room to hide the teapot,
lest the boys should want sugar and bread.
“What do you give them for dinner?” I asked.
“Stirabout and new milk,” she replied.
“Potatoes?” I suggested.
“They do not care about potatoes,” she said.
Our corn-meal, among its many other Irish uses, seems likely to supersede
the national dish. What a change since 1847, the year of the potato
famine! This family used Indian meal because it was cheaper than oatmeal,
but they did not like it so well. As for the inferior animals, they
occasionally give horses corn-meal, but generally feed them in winter on
oats, turnips, bran, and hay. Indian meal and bran are fed to cows with
young calves. To pigs corn-meal is given the year round, occasionally
adding a few boiled potatoes, the sortings. They are fattened on meal
and sour milk when it can be spared. Poultry abounds here, and Ireland
exports large quantities of eggs. I never saw corn-meal at home stand so
constantly in the chicken-trough as at Collins’s.
I have said that the domestic came into my room to hide the teapot. The
cup which cheers but not inebriates is in immense demand here. The old
aunt wanted tea. The children worried the girl for tea. The beggar-woman
insisted on tea. The three-year-old Norah says she has a pain and
wants tea. It might be a very happy thing for Ireland if the people
would confine themselves to such cups as these; but, while all other
manufactures are languishing in the county Cork, malt liquor and whiskey
distilleries are flourishing. (However, Scotland, a Quaker told me,
excelled Ireland in regular drinking.) As to what constitutes moderate
drinking, I was amused by the remarks of a girl in Cork. Speaking of
young men, she said that she did not object to a bottle of porter at
dinner and one in the evening, but seven or eight bottles a day she
thought gluttony and a sin. Porter, however, is not dear. On draught it
sells at about eight cents the quart imperial. Whiskey is quite another
thing. I hear that the tax on a gallon is twelve shillings and ninepence,
or about three dollars. It has been said that Ireland pays more for
liquor than for rent; yet estimates given me show that while over nine
millions of pounds sterling are spent yearly on intoxicating drink, the
rent of the country amounts to thirteen million pounds. Let no one jump
to the conclusion that it is the working farmers who expend this great
amount, for doubtless the small landlords are great consumers.