About the year 1889 when I was seventeen years old I commenced on the
lowest rung on the railroad ladder and went to work on the section. I
was frail physically, and must have been the same mentally, for I never
got beyond the third rung. I worked in the days when you spoke for the
spring job the preceding fall, and then often your application met
failure. In hard times when jobs are few the fellow that has them is
blessed with unusual longevity, and whenever some one did pass beyond,
his demise was railroad talk for a long time.
When you consider that all through the central west, which had a few
years earlier been homesteaded after several repeated crop failures,
almost the entire population were looking for employment and the only
cash job in the country was a section job, you can realize how desirable
and prized a position it was.
I don't remember how it came that my application was slumbering all
through the cold winter with a large number of those half-starved
homesteaders who hadn't raised anything for so many years, received
recognition in the spring; but it did and I got one of the plums.
The first time I pumped a hand-car I fully realized the Lord had made no
mistake by taking out one of the ribs and leaving the backbone whole. If
you ever pumped a hand-car I will pass from this painful mode of travel
and let you refresh your own memory and backache.
I got along pretty well, when the "Boss" wasn't nervous that the road
master would come along and want to borrow another fifty dollars on his
word without interest, everything went nicely. When weed cutting time,
came I gritted my teeth, held my back as straight as I could and whacked
away. Besides the excruciating pain in the back that made you feel like
you would like to give one long piercing yell, throw your shovel away
and run for town, there was the additional pain of seeing the "Boss"
sitting on the hand car resting his back. He had the advantage and the
authority! I must keep at it and cut the weeds or the wheels of the
locomotive would slip, the traveler couldn't resume his journey, all
traffic would stop, and down would go the railroad stock and let out all
the water.
It would have been a blessing if the water could have been spilled by
some patent process where the weeds were to be cut, but, monopolies
monopolize and if the Lord didn't see fit to have the rain fall in
September instead of June no one was to blame, except Grover Cleveland.
The Republicans said the country always went to the dogs and dried up
when the Democrats elected a President. I was too young then to know
much about statesmanship and I wouldn't want to say for repetition
whether or not the Lord and Cleveland were working together or
otherwise, but I do remember some one was mighty stingy with the
moisture.
If you, my dear reader, have never had the privilege of cutting weeds
for a dollar and thirty-five cents per day for three weeks in succession
then, for all that's good and beautiful, take my advice and let the Jap,
Greek, or Italian have your place and do the mowing. Either of them can
get better wages and any of these dark-skinned brethren will do as much
in three days as the white man would in one day and cause the pale face
no extra exertion.
The pain in the back caused from close association with a shovel from
seven o'clock to twelve o'clock and from one o'clock to six even now,
over twenty years afterwards, almost makes me break down and give vent
to my feelings in a more noticeable manner than my friend Taft when he
was informed that he had carried Utah. If you have ever been tortured
with lumbago, you have a slight knowledge of what races up and down the
back of a weed cutter. When he bends down he can't get up and when he
gets up he can't get down. There you are! Humiliated, suffering and mad,
knife blade sticking you whenever you move, but you must or bust. You
are a free born American citizen but you must lose sight of the special
endowment when you are cutting weeds. The constitution may be back of
you, but just at present you have got to get back of your own
constitution and a "darn" good one too, or you've lost your job and that
dearly beloved stipend of thirteen and one-half cents an hour.
Being on the low rung of the railroad ladder is the same as in all other
departments, the man at the bottom gets the low wages, needs the good
back and carries the heavy burden. He don't need much brain; he is told
what to do; how to do it and when. He's told when to go to work and when
to quit. Brains would be a nuisance and, if he had any, he wouldn't be
working on the section. Time has proved that, and the Dago takes his
place.
What became of the Irish, Swede, German and Bohemian section men of
twenty-five years ago is more than I know. Extempore, an increase of
brains did something for him and you don't find him tramping ties with
the Dago. But the man at the low rung hasn't much choice; he can work or
quit. His job is always in jeopardy as he couldn't save enough in a year
to loan out an occasional "fifty" to smooth the feelings of an over
auspicious road-master. He's at the bottom and whatever falls goes down
to him and in an undignified way he must carry the whole load, for it
can not go lower. The general manager can ease his feelings on the
superintendent, and he on the road-master and the road-master can growl
at the section foreman, but when the section foreman dumps the whole
putrid, half-boiled mess on the unlearned day laborer you can see the
urgent necessity of a fine piece of choice workmanship in the middle of
the back. You seldom see a man with a front like a wash-tub turned
edgewise working on the railroad. There is no room for him! You must be
able to see your feet if you cut weeds, and have a stomach that can say
"Hello" to the backbone at nine fifteen A. M.
When the winds used to tear loose from the nasty bad lands of South
Dakota and come tearing over the semi-arid plains for three days in
succession at a velocity of sixty miles an hour it seems the Lord could
have improved on man by giving him a gizzard to grind up the accumulated
gravel that had been beaten into his daily bread. It came pretty near
taking the hide off from me to keep pace with those hungry homesteaders
who were afraid of losing their jobs and existence.
I am glad that I had the backbone. The term is applicable in two ways.
One is the acquisition of a resilient mechanism in the center of your
back, starting at the base of your brain and running down to a certain
point or as far as is necessary, and the other is a priceless stamina,
determination and a square deal. I am not sorry that I acquired some on
the railroad; its a good thing to have in the every day affairs of life.
I hardened my backbone when I worked on the steel gang a few years
afterwards, and, if there is such a thing as a steel backbone, I claim
some right to its possession through low remuneration and dirty cabbage.
Keen retrenchment policies make better satisfied stockholders and also
make wages that would embarrass a bumble bee if he were buying a pair of
leggings and expected to pay for them.
It takes unlimited backbone for a congressman to vote "Yes" on the
prohibition amendment and turn down the easy money of the brewers. It
takes backbone for a president to cast custom aside and step into the
halls of congress and demand that the party pledges be kept. It takes a
better backbone to enter the same halls and take a determined stand on a
cause that means better citizenship. It takes backbone if the minister
ousts the liberal paying hypocrite who is helping to kill the church
with his pocketbook.
It takes backbone every day you live and if you don't use it in the way
it was intended you can't tread the narrow path and expect to slip into
heaven without being recognized. You may do it on earth but you must not
try it where you are known. It takes backbone to be a Christian, the
earnest conscientious kind, that can lay all jealousy aside, all
prejudice and hatred and give the offender a square Christian deal.
Unless you can do these things you CAN'T be a Christian, the kind that
Jesus told us to be. The other kind is a sham and an out-and-out sinner
is far better. True Christianity will not allow one individual to do
another of the slightest wrong. The conscience of a real Christian will
not allow any ill feeling or the harboring of malice. You know it's
wrong, your conscience reminds you of the wrong and unless you remove
that kind of Christianity you can never receive the fruits that come
from the narrow way and be a successful Christian. You know yourself if
you are a sham so why try to fool anybody and carry a false label.