_Thursday, May 14th._
Before the open door of a “side-door Pullman” I sit at ease on our
bedding roll with my diary on my knees, watching the Iowa prairie billow
past. What a relief to view the stretches of gluey, sloppy road, serene
in the knowledge that for the present at least we are free from its
sticky toils.
We lunched last Monday beside the Stockdale siding and while packing our
belongings preparatory to another tussle with the bike, a freight train
pulled in. The train crew surveyed us with vast interest, and as the
engine backed slowly past, the engineer leaned far out of the cab
window.
“Whither away?” he queried.
“California or bust,” yelled Dan.
The long train jarred to a stop on the siding. A brakeman appeared and
entered into conversation.
“It must be pretty fierce to ride a wheel through that mud,” he
volunteered.
“You bet it is,” agreed Dan, “and the track isn’t much better. If I bark
any more hide off my shins, I’ll have to buy a pair of crutches.”
With a shriek and a roar a passenger train thundered through. The
freight pulled slowly off the siding. The engineer leaned out as before,
his big, good-natured mouth stretched in a broad grin, his right arm
swinging with a scooping motion.
“Get aboard! Get aboard!” he shouted.
Dan and I exchanged glances. With one accord we jumped for the wheel
which stood loaded for the start, and ran it along beside the track. Car
after car groaned past. The caboose appeared. A brakeman leaned from the
step and grasped the handle bars, the conductor lent a hand, and in a
moment our old machine was being hoisted upon the platform while Dan and
I scrambled up the steps.
Followed a detailed account of our aims and adventures, which was
listened to with keen attention. The train crew held a council of war to
determine the best means of procedure. About half way up the train was
situated an empty box car, and to this we were transferred as soon as
darkness had fallen. We spread our blankets on the floor and composed
ourselves for sleep.
But alas and alack! A new crew had come aboard, who had chosen our
resting place for a bumper and appeared to be switching all the cars on
the middle division with it. We would enter a siding with much grinding
and jarring, coming to a stop with a jolt. The train would be uncoupled
in the middle, our car would advance with increasing speed,
then—whang—we would bump the standing gondolas, the train would buckle
at each coupling with a resounding thumping, the engine would jerk us
backward, and we were off to repeat the performance.
Towards morning the door of the box car slid softly open and several men
piled in. Dan asked them what they wanted and one replied, “It’s all
right, Bo. We’re west-bound bundle stiffs same as yourself.”
Great was their amazement when the morning light revealed the presence
of a woman. About sunrise, two jumped out to “rustle some grub” while
the engine stopped for water.
The train was moving out and we had given them up, when here they came,
helter skelter, and leaped aboard the speeding car. One had some slices
of meat and bread in a newspaper, while the other carried part of a loaf
of bread. The food was unhesitatingly divided among the five of us and
was greatly appreciated.
The scant meal finished, we settled down to talk. I was amazed at the
mentality displayed by the smallest fellow, a member of the I. W. W. He
seemed conversant with all the questions of the day, and expressed in
excellent language clear cut opinions on industrial subjects that were
both novel and startling. They were all workers, but jobs were scarce
where they came from, so they were going west in the hope of bettering
their condition. The fact that thousands were at that moment travelling
in the opposite direction, impelled by self-same conditions, failed to
deter them.
One was a big, husky chap with rugged, honest features and the true
brown eyes of a Collie. His story interested me greatly.
Born among collieries, he was driven to work as a breaker boy at a very
early age by the wretched poverty of his parents. After several years of
deadening toil at a time when he should have been in school, he drifted
away to join the great army of migratory workers. He worked on a
threshing machine while the harvest was in progress, and at its close
what little money he had been able to save was consumed while searching
for another job. Perhaps he got work with pick and shovel in some
construction gang, but the contractor’s system of low wages, high board
bills, charges for physician’s care—which most do not receive—and the
like, kept him destitute. He called at an employment office, where he
paid two dollars for a job, was worked just long enough to pay for
transportation, board and monthly fees, then discharged without wages,
his employer and the agent dividing up the original fee. From coast to
coast he wandered, sweating in the dust and heat of summer through long
hours of racking labor, in order to escape starvation in the idle months
of winter.
His eyes grew dark and wistful as he shyly confessed his one love
affair. He had secured employment in a little lumber mill and made such
a good impression on the boss, who was also the owner, that he was taken
to board in his own home. Here the poor fellow got his first idea of
what home life might mean. He fell in love with the daughter of the
house, who seemed to reciprocate, but before they could enter into any
formal engagement the lumber trust put the mill out of business, ruining
the owner, who was forced to leave that part of the country.
Try as he would, the young man could secure no steady employment and
marriage without such foundation was out of the question.
“I saw enough of getting married on nothing when I was a boy,” he
concluded. “Wages are set for single men, I reckon. And after a bit a
fellow can’t earn a living for his family, so the wife and kiddies have
to rustle out and work. Easy enough for them to get a job,” he added
bitterly. “Many a time I’ve seen kids doing work that I’d been glad to
get. But they can beat a man all out at working cheap. They got to work
cheap or starve. I may be a good-for-nothing bundle stiff, but I’ve
never got so low as to live off the work of little children.”
“Our good business men are not so finicky,” broke in the I. W. W. “A big
profit looks good to them. If it comes from the coined sweat and blood
of women and children, so much the better. Yes, women are cheaper than
men, and kids are cheaper than women. After a bit they’ll get machines
that are cheaper than kids, and then the brats can rot in the slums for
all they care.”
“Why not let the people in general own the machines and run them for use
instead of for profit? Then the men could do the work, the women could
stay at home and the children go to school.” Thus spoke the quiet member
of the trio.
“Shut up, you crazy socialist!” exclaimed the I. W. W. “You fellows
won’t do anything but vote. You leave it to us. We’re the boys who’ll
fix the machines, all right, all right. Yes, and the plutes, too.”
I remembered the many I. W. W. signs and notices that were posted along
the way; the groups of men beneath the water tanks who listened eagerly
to the harangues of such as he. Some even had told me that they had
given up liquor because it blunted their faculties at a time when brains
were needed in the workers’ fight against the capitalists. I seemed to
hear a muttering as of a gathering storm; perhaps in the days preceding
the French Revolution a similar murmuring rose.
There are so many like my dark-eyed acquaintance. He lost touch with his
sweetheart, lost hope, lost ambition and now drifts aimlessly about the
country in search of a bare subsistence.
It is he and the millions of his class who quarry the stone and hew the
timber for our cities; they build the roadbed and lay the tracks for
swiftly turning Pullman wheels; they mine the coal that warms our
dwellings; they harvest the wheat that nourishes our bodies; without
their labour industry would cease.
Yet life to them holds out no hope, no promise; their meagre earnings
forbid the thought of marriage; their only home is some saloon; their
final rest the potter’s field.
About ten o’clock a trainman poked his head inside the door.
“Hey, clear out, you fellows. This is no place for you when we enter the
yard. Better beat it.”
The hoboes bade us adieu and sprang from the car. The brakeman leaped in
beside us.
“We finish our run at the next stop,” he said. “The engineer will slow
down at the outskirts of town and you jump off and hike out. You’ll find
the main road over to the north.”
We thanked him warmly for his kindness and made ready to follow his
advice. Soon the train slowed to a mere crawl. Dan leaped down and ran
alongside, I swung out the wheel, which he seized, and in an instant I
was standing beside him.
Waving farewell to the train crew, who had all turned out to see us off,
we struck out for the main road. The straggling outskirts of a
good-sized town lay before us.
“Tell you what,” I remarked after we had traversed some distance.
“Suppose we stop in the residence section and look for work. I’ll offer
to do washing or cleaning by the day, and you can cut the lawn, wash the
automobile or something.”
Dan replied with a snort of righteous indignation. “Ever since you were
bit by the crazy bug and started out to be a lady hobo you have lost all
your natural pride, Ethel. It was bad enough for me, a high-class
electrical engineer with a paid-up union card in my pocket, to stoop to
the job of a common labourer as I did last week for your sake. Now I’ll
be damned if I become a dirty roustabout and have some old hen ordering
me around while I sweep off the front porch.”
“Oh, all right,” I answered cheerily. “But the interesting hour of high
noon approacheth. Will you please be so kind as to furnish me with exact
information regarding your financial standing? I am pained to confess
myself the victim of a too familiar craving which calls aloud for
attention.”
Dan thrust his hand into his pocket and withdrew a solitary ten cent
piece, nor did a prolonged search of numerous pockets yield further
riches.
“’Tis sad,” I sighed, “but a still voice tells me that that bit of
silver will prove strangely inadequate to the demands of nature.
However, no doubt you can dine off your natural pride, served up on your
paid-up union card, while I eat a dime’s worth of doughnuts or
something.”
We approached a rather pretentious place as I spoke. A large brass sign
announced “J. Stanchley Loane, M.D., Physician and Surgeon.” I paused to
study the white house with the red-roofed garage in the rear.
“This looks like a good place to make a start. Think I’ll just go in and
call on my fellow practitioner and see what happens.”
Dan stepped in front of me. “Now see here, Ethel!” he began angrily.
“Don’t go to pulling off foolish stunts. You are my wife and I
absolutely forbid you to go about like an Irish washerwoman and——”
“Now see here, Dan!” I mimicked, breaking in upon his authoritative
harangue, “I am your wife, ’tis true, but sad to say, the fact does not
prevent me from growing hungry. ’Tis also true that I am only a graduate
physician with a high-class appetite. I have no paid-up union card to
stand between me and possible employment with its promise of a square
meal. Moreover, I have never felt myself to be so wonderfully superior
to the Irish washerwomen who earn an honest living by honest labour. At
any rate, I shall not attempt to hold myself above them unless I can
prove by my conduct that I have that right. Just now I fail to see how
either you or I can do better than by marching up to that back door and
asking for work like the genuine bundle stiffs that we are. Of course if
you desire to remain here on the curb, upholding your dignity while I
ask for employment, you are entirely at liberty to do so. As for me, I’m
going in right now.”
As I turned up the concrete driveway Dan leaned the wheel against the
fence and followed. I rapped at the door of the screen porch. The inner
door was opened and a heavy-set man with bristling, reddish hair stepped
out.
“Good morning, Doctor Loane,” I began. “My husband and I are cycling to
California, and being short of funds are looking for employment. My
husband is an excellent mechanic and will be glad to go over your car
for you. I can cook, wash, scrub or do any kind of housework.”
The doctor looked us up and down with an insolent stare.
“So you can cook, can you? Suppose you come in and show what you can do.
I’m alone in the house to-day. We have a devilish time with servants.
Our last maid—a pretty little fool—got on her high horse and quit us
yesterday, and the old harridan of a cook followed suit. My wife’s gone
to town to get another bunch.”
“Sit down on the porch, you,” he ordered Dan, “and you step in here.
There is the pantry and the ice chest. Throw together some sort of lunch
and call me when it’s ready.” He waved his hand with a lordly air and
disappeared into the front of the house.
A short inspection enabled me to determine on a suitable menu, and soon
a very fair lunch was spread on the dining table.
“Humph! You are quite a clever piece of goods,” the doctor volunteered,
as I summoned him to the meal. “Go and feed your man now, and later
we’ll find something more for you to do.”
The meal concluded, Dr. Loane took Dan to the garage, while I whisked
the dishes away and tidied the kitchen. The doctor entered as I finished
my task.
“There is some work to be attended to in my private office, and you are
just the one to do it for me,” he grinned ingratiatingly.