TAKING A WHIRL AT COMMERCIAL WORK--MY FIRST ATTEMPT--THE GALVESTON FIRE
The memory of my exciting experience in Arizona lasted me a good long
time, and I finally determined to leave the railroad service and try my
hand at commercial work. The two classes are the same, and yet they are
entirely different.
It is a most interesting sight, to the uninitiated, to go into the
operating room of a big commercial office and see the swarms of men and
women bending over glass partitioned tables; nimble footed check boys
running hither and thither like so many flies, carrying to each wire the
proper messages, while the volume of sound that greets your ears is
positively deafening. Every once in a while some operator will raise his
head and yell "Pink," "C. N. D." or "Wire." "Pink" means a message that
is to be rushed; "C. N. D." is a market quotation that is to be hurried
over to the Bucket Shops or Stock Exchange, while "Wire," means a
message that pertains to some wire that is in trouble and such messages
must have precedence over all others. The check boys are trained to
know the destination of each and every wire and work under the direction
of the traffic chief.
Far over on one side of a room is the switch board. To the untutored
mind it looks like numberless long parallel strips of brass tacked on
the side of the wall, and each strip perforated by a number of small
holes, while stuck around, in what seems endless profusion, are many
gutta-percha-topped brass pegs. Yet through all this seeming mass of
confusion, everything is in apple pie order, and each one of those
strips represents a wire and every plug a connection to some set of
instruments. The wire chief and his assistants are in full charge of
this work, and it must needs be a man of great ability to successfully
fill such a place in a large office.
The chief operator has entire supervision over the whole office, and his
duties are hard, constant, and arduous. Like competent train
despatchers, men able to be first-class chief operators are few and far
between. Not only must he be an expert telegrapher, but he must
thoroughly understand line, battery and switch board work, and his
executive ability must be of the highest order.
I had always supposed if a man were a first-class railroad operator he
could do equally good work on a commercial wire; in fact the operator
in a small town is always employed by the railroad company and does the
little amount of commercial work in addition to his other duties.
After leaving Blue Field I loafed a while, but that's tiresome work at
best, so I journeyed down to Galveston, Texas, one bright fall morning,
and after trying my luck at the railroad offices, I wandered into the
commercial office on the Strand and asked George Clarke, the chief
operator, for a job.
"What kind of a man are you?" he said.
"First-class in every respect, sir," I replied.
"Sit down there on the polar side of that Houston quad and if you are
any account, I'll give you a job at seventy dollars per month."
Now a "Quad" is an instrument whereby four messages are going over the
_same_ wire at the _same_ time. The mechanism of the machine is
different in every respect from the old relay, key and sounder, used on
the railroad wires. In a vague way I had heard of "quads," and imagined
I could work them as well as an "O. S." wire, but when he said for me to
sit down on the "Polar side," I was, for a minute, stumped. However,
there were already three chaps sitting at that table, so the fourth
place must be mine. I sat down and presently I heard the sounder say,
"Who?" I answered "BY," and then "HO," said, "Hr. City," I grabbed a pen
and made ready to copy, but by the time he had finished the address I
was just putting down the number and check. "Break" I said, "G. A.
from," B-r-r-r-r- how that sounder did jump. This interesting operation
was repeated several times, but finally I succeeded in getting the
message down, and then without giving me time to draw my breath, he
said, "C. N. D." and started ahead with a jargon of figures and words
that I had never heard of before. His sending was plain enough, in fact
it was like a circus bill, but I wasn't on to the combination, and it
was all Greek to me. Perspiration started from every pore, and in my
agony I said, "Break, G. A. Ahr.," Holy Smoke! how he did fly off at
that, and how those other three chaps did grin at my discomfiture.
"Call your chief operator over here," and with that he refused to work
with me any more. Clarke came over and that blasted chump at "HO" said,
"For heaven's sake give us an operator to do the receiving on the polar'
side of this quad. We are piled up with business and can't be delayed by
teaching the ropes to a railroad ham. He's been ten minutes taking one
message, and I haven't been able to pound into his head what a 'C. N.
D,' is yet."
Clarke quietly gave him "O. K." and then turned to me with,
"I guess you are not used to this kind of work. Better go back to
railroading, and learn something about commercial work before tackling a
job like this again. Come back in six months and I'll give you another
trial." I sneaked out of the office, followed by the broad smiles of
every man in the place, and thus ended the first lesson.
I took Clarke's advice and went back to work on a narrow-gauge road
running northwards out of Houston, through the most God-forsaken country
on the footstool. Sluggish bayous, foul rank growth of vegetation,
alligators as long as a rail, that would come out and stop trains by
being on the track, and air so malarious in quality that it was only a
question of time until one had the fever. I stuck it out for two months
and then succumbed to the inevitable and went to the hospital where I
lay for three weeks. After I had fully recovered they put me to work in
the Houston General Office, and some eight months after reaching there I
received a message from my old friend Clarke, saying, "if I had improved
any in my commercial work he would give me a job at seventy dollars per
month." I hadn't improved much, but as this world is two-thirds bluff, I
made mine, and said I'd come, trusting to luck to be able to hold on.
I reached there one pleasant afternoon and the next morning went to
work. I must have had my rabbit's foot with me, because I was assigned
to a "Way Wire." I think if he had told me to tackle a "Quad," again, I
should have fainted. A "Way Wire," is one that runs along a railroad,
having offices cut in in all the small towns. There wasn't a town on the
whole string that had more than ten or fifteen messages a day, but the
aggregate of all the offices made up a very good day's work. Then again
I didn't have to handle any of those confounded "C. N. D." messages.
Clarke watched me closely and at the end of the first day he said my
work showed a marked improvement. You may rest assured I watched my P's
and Q's, and it wasn't long before I had the hang of the system and
could take my trick on a "Quad" with the best of them. Rheostats,
wheatstone bridges, polarized relays, pole changers, and ground switches
became as familiar to me as the old relay key and sounder had been.
Some of the rarest gems of the profession worked in "G" office at this
time--George Clarke, "Cy" Clamphitt, "Jack" Graham, Will Church,
John McNeill, Paul Finnegan alias the "Count," and a score or more of
men, as good as ever touched a key or balanced a quad. A day's work was
from eight A. M., until five P. M., and for all over time we were paid
extra at the rate of forty cents per hour. This extra work was called
"Scooping."
One day in December, Clarke asked me if I wanted to "scoop" that night.
I acquiesced and after eating a hasty supper I went back to the office
and prepared for a long siege. I was put to sending press reports, which
is just about as hard work as a man can do. I sent "30" (the end) at two
o'clock in the morning, and went home worn to a frazzle. I was boarding
on Avenue M. with ten other operators, in a house kept by a Mrs.
Swanson, and roomed with her little son Jimmie, who was a hopeless
cripple. I undressed, and after shoving little Jim over to his own side
of the bed, tumbled in and was soon sleeping like a log. It seemed as if
I had just closed my eyes when I felt some one pulling my hair. I
knocked the hand away and prepared to take another snooze, when there
was that awful pull on my red head again. I opened my eyes prepared to
fight, when I felt an extra hard pull, and heard the wee sma' voice of
my diminutive room mate say,
"Get up, the house is on fire." "Rats," I said--Again,--the awful
pull,--and,--"Mr. Bates, for God's sake get up; the house is on fire;
the whole town is burning up."
I sprang out of bed and the crackling of the timbers, the glow of the
flames, and the stifling smoke, soon assured me it was time to move, and
quickly at that. I grabbed up a few clothes in one arm, and grasping
brave little Jimmie Swanson in the other, I started for the steps. On
our side, the whole house was in flames, and the smoke rushing up the
stair-way was something awful. I wrapped Jimmie's head in his night
shirt, and throwing a coat over mine, I started down the stairs. Half
way down my foot slipped, and we both pitched head first to the bottom.
Poor little Jim, his right arm was broken by the fall, and when he tried
to get up, he found that his one sound leg was badly strained. He said,
"Never mind me, Mr. Bates, save yourself. I'll crawl out."
Leave him to roast alive? Never! I grabbed him again and after a
desperate effort succeeded in getting him out. All our supply of
clothing had been lost in our mad efforts to escape, and as a bitter
norther was blowing at the time, our position was anything but pleasant.
I found a few clothes dropped by some one else and we made ourselves as
warm as possible. Then I grabbed Jimmie up again and fled before the
fiery blast. The awful catastrophe had started in a fisherman's shack
over on the bay, twenty-seven squares from where we lived, and being
borne by a high wind, had swept everything in its path. The houses were
mostly of timber and were easy prey to the relentless flames. Although
Galveston is entirely surrounded by water, the pipe-lines for fighting
fire at this time extended only to Avenue H, ten blocks from the Strand.
Beyond that, the fire department depended on the cisterns of private
houses for the water to subdue the flames.
With lightning-like rapidity the flames had spread and almost before
they knew it the town seemed doomed. Arches of flame, myriads of falling
sparks, hundreds of fleeing half-clad men, women and children, the
hissing of the engines in their puny attempts to fight the monster, and
ever and anon the dull roar of the falling walls, made a scene, as grand
and weird as it was desolate and awful. In less than two hours time
fifty-two squares had been laid waste, leaving a trail of smoldering
black ashes. That the whole city did not go is due to a providential
switch of the wind that blew the flames back on their own tracks.
Of the fifteen operators in the day force, twelve had been burned out,
and the next morning, at eight o'clock, when all had reported for duty,
they were as sorry a looking lot of men as ever assembled.
"Some in rags, some in jags, and one in velvet gown." "Count" Finnegan
had on a frilled shirt, a pair of trousers three sizes too small for
him, and his manly form was wrapped in a flowing robe of black velvet,
picked up by him in his mad flight.
It was many a day before the effects of this direful calamity were
entirely obliterated.