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ONE WAY OUT
A MIDDLE-CLASS NEW-ENGLANDER
EMIGRATES TO AMERICA
ONE WAY OUT
A MIDDLE-CLASS NEW-ENGLANDER
EMIGRATES TO AMERICA
BY
WILLIAM CARLETON
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1911
BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_Entered at Stationers' Hall_
Published January 28, 1911; second printing January
_Presswork by Geo. H. Ellis Co., Boston, U.S.A._
TO HER
WHO WASN'T AFRAID
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER 1
II THIRTY DOLLARS A WEEK 18
III THE MIDDLE CLASS HELL 37
IV WE EMIGRATE TO AMERICA 53
V WE PROSPECT 67
VI I BECOME A DAY LABORER 82
VII NINE DOLLARS A WEEK 94
VIII SUNDAY 112
IX PLANS FOR THE FUTURE 125
X THE EMIGRANT SPIRIT 146
XI NEW OPPORTUNITIES 165
XII OUR FIRST WINTER 183
XIII I BECOME A CITIZEN 200
XIV FIFTEEN DOLLARS A WEEK 216
XV THE GANG 234
XVI DICK FINDS A WAY OUT, TOO 252
XVII THE SECOND YEAR 266
XVIII MATURING PLANS 283
XIX ONCE AGAIN A NEW ENGLANDER 298
ONE WAY OUT
ONE WAY OUT
CHAPTER I
A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER
My great-grandfather was killed in the Revolution; my grandfather
fought in the War of 1812; my father sacrificed his health in the
Civil War; but I, though born in New England, am the first of my
family to emigrate to this country--the United States of America. That
sounds like a riddle or a paradox. It isn't; it's a plain statement of
fact.
As a matter of convenience let me call myself Carleton. I've no desire
to make public my life for the sake of notoriety. My only idea in
writing these personal details is the hope that they may help some
poor devil out of the same hole in which I found myself mired. They
are of too sacred a nature to share except impersonally. Even behind
the disguise of an assumed name I passed some mighty uncomfortable
hours a few months ago when I sketched out for a magazine and saw in
cold print what I'm now going to give in full. It made me feel as
though I had pulled down the walls of my house and was living my life
open to the view of the street. For a man whose home means what it
does to me, there's nothing pleasant about that.
However, I received some letters following that brief article which
made the discomfort seem worth while. My wife and I read them over
with something like awe. They came from Maine and they came from
Texas; they came from the north, they came from the south, until we
numbered our unseen friends by the hundred. Running through these
letters was the racking cry that had once rended our own hearts--"How
to get out!" As we read some of them our throats grew lumpy.
"God help them," said my wife over and over again.
As we read others, we felt very glad that our lives had been in some
way an inspiration to them. After talking the whole matter over we
decided that if it helped any to let people know how we ourselves
pulled out, why it was our duty to do so. For that purpose, which is
the purpose of this book, Carleton is as good a name as any.
My people were all honest, plodding, middle-class Americans. They
stuck where they were born, accepted their duties as they came, earned
a respectable living and died without having money enough left to make
a will worth while. They were all privates in the ranks. But they were
the best type of private--honest, intelligent, and loyal unto death.
They were faithful to their families and unswerving in their duty to
their country. The records of their lives aren't interesting, but they
are as open as daylight.
My father seems to have had at first a bit more ambition stirring
within him than his ancestors. He started in the lumber business for
himself in a small way but with the first call for troops sold out and
enlisted. He did not distinguish himself but he fought in more battles
than many a man who came out a captain. He didn't quit until the war
was over. Then he crawled back home subdued and sick. He refused ever
to draw a pension because he felt it was as much a man's duty to fight
for his country as for his wife. He secured a position as head clerk
and confidential man with an old established lumber firm and here he
stuck the rest of his life. He earned a decent living and in the
course of time married and occupied a comfortable home. My mother died
when I was ten and after that father sold his house and we boarded. It
was a dreary enough life for both of us. Mother was the sort of mother
who lives her whole life in caring for her men folks so that her going
left us as helpless as babies. For a long while we didn't even know
when to change our stockings. But obeying the family tradition, father
accepted his lot stoically and as final. No one in our family ever
married twice. With the death of the wife and mother the home ceased
and that was the end of it.
I remember my father with some pride. He was a tall, old-fashioned
looking man with a great deal of quiet dignity. I came to know him
much better in the next few years after mother died than ever before
for we lived together in one room and had few friends. I can see him
now sitting by a small kerosene lamp after I had gone to bed clumsily
trying to mend some rent in my clothes. I thought it an odd occupation
for a man but I know now what he was about. I think his love for my
mother must have been deep for he talked to me a great deal of her and
seemed much more concerned about my future on her account than on
either his own or mine. I think it was she--she was a woman of some
spirit--who persuaded him to consider sending me to college. This
accounted partly for the mending although there was some sentiment
about it too. I think he liked to feel that he was carrying out her
work for me even in such a small matter as this.
How much he was earning and how much he saved I never knew. I went to
school and had all the common things of the ordinary boy and I don't
remember that I ever asked him for any pocket money but what he gave
it to me. It was towards the end of my senior year in the high school
that I began to notice a change in him. He was at times strangely
excited and at other times strangely blue. He asked me a great many
questions about my preference in the matter of a college and bade me
keep well up in my studies. He began to skimp a little and I found out
afterwards that one reason he grew so thin was because he did away
with his noon meal. It makes my blood boil now when I remember where
the fruit of this self-sacrifice went. I wouldn't recall it here
except as a humble tribute to his memory.
One night I came back to the room and though it was not yet dark I was
surprised to see a crack of yellow light creeping out from beneath the
sill. Suspecting something was wrong, I pushed open the door and saw
my father seated by the lamp with a pair of trousers I had worn when a
kid in his hands. His head was bent and he was trying to sew. I went
to his side and asked him what the trouble was. He looked up but he
didn't know me. He never knew me again. He died a few days afterwards.
I found then that he had invested all his savings in a wild-cat mining
scheme. They had been swept away.
So at eighteen I was left alone with the only capital that succeeding
generations of my family ever inherited--a common school education and
a big, sound physique. My father's tragic death was a heavy blow but
the mere fact that I was thrown on my own resources did not dishearten
me. In fact the prospect rather roused me. I had soaked in the humdrum
atmosphere of the boarding house so long that the idea of having to
earn my own living came rather as an adventure. While dependent on my
father, I had been chained to this one room and this one city, but now
I felt as though the whole wide world had suddenly been opened up to
me. I had no particular ambition beyond earning a comfortable living
and I was sure enough at eighteen of being able to do this. If I
chose, I could go to sea--there wasn't a vessel but what would take so
husky a youngster; if I wished, I could go into railroading--here
again there was a demand for youth and brawn. I could go into a
factory and learn manufacturing or I could go into an office and learn
a business. I was young, I was strong, I was unfettered. There is no
one on earth so free as such a young man. I could settle in New York
or work my way west and settle in Seattle or go north into Canada. My
legs were stout and I could walk if necessary. And wherever I was, I
had only to stop and offer the use of my back and arms in return for
food and clothes. Most men feel like this only once in their lives. In
a few years they become fettered again--this time for good.
Having no inclination towards the one thing or the other, I took the
first opportunity that offered. A chum of mine had entered the employ
of the United Woollen Company and seeing another vacancy there in the
clerical department, he persuaded me to join him. I began at five
dollars a week. I was put at work adding up columns of figures that
had no more meaning to me than the problems in the school arithmetic.
But it wasn't hard work and my hours were short and my associates
pleasant. After a while I took a certain pride in being part of this
vast enterprise. My chum and I hired a room together and we both felt
like pretty important business men as we bought our paper on the car
every morning and went down town.
It took close figuring to do anything but live that first year and yet
we pushed our way with the crowd into the nigger heavens and saw most
of the good shows. I had never been to the theatre before and I liked
it.
Next year I received a raise of five dollars and watched the shows
from the rear of the first balcony. That is the only change the raise
made that I can remember except that I renewed my stock of clothes.
The only thing I'm sure of is that at the end of the second year I
didn't have anything left over.
That is true of the next six years. My salary was advanced steadily to
twenty dollars and at that time it took just twenty dollars a week
for me to live. I wasn't extravagant and I wasn't dissipated but every
raise found a new demand. It seemed to work automatically. You might
almost say that our salaries were not raised at all but that we were
promoted from a ten dollar plane of life to a fifteen dollar plane and
then to a twenty. And we all went together--that is the men who
started together. Each advance meant unconsciously the wearing of
better clothes, rooming at better houses, eating at better
restaurants, smoking better tobacco, and more frequent amusements.
This left us better satisfied of course but after all it left us just
where we began. Life didn't mean much to any of us at this time and if
we were inclined to look ahead why there were the big salaried jobs
before us to dream about. But even if a man had been forehanded and of
a saving nature, he couldn't have done much without sacrificing the
only friends most of us had--his office associates. For instance--to
save five dollars a week at this time I would have had to drop back
into the fifteen dollars a week crowd and I'd have been as much out of
place there as a boy dropped into a lower grade at school. I remember
that when I was finally advanced another five dollars I half-heartedly
resolved to put that amount in the bank weekly. But at this point the
crowd all joined a small country club and I had either to follow or
drop out of their lives. Of course in looking back I can see where I
might have done differently but I wasn't looking back then--nor very
far ahead either. If it would have prevented my joining the country
club I'm glad I didn't.
It was out there that I met the girl who became my wife. My best
reason for remaining anonymous is the opportunity it will give me to
tell about Ruth. I want to feel free to rave about her if I wish. She
objected in the magazine article and she objects even more strongly
now but, as before, I must have an uncramped hand in this. The chances
are that I shall talk more about her than I did the first time. The
whole scheme of my life, beginning, middle and end, swings around her.
Without her inspiration I don't like to think what the end of me might
have been. And it's just as true to-day as it was in the stress of the
fight.
I was twenty-six when I met Ruth and she was eighteen. She came out to
the club one Saturday afternoon to watch some tennis. It happened
that I had worked into the finals of the tournament but that day I
wasn't playing very well. I was beaten in the first set, six-two. What
was worse I didn't care a hang if I was. I had found myself feeling
like this about a lot of things during those last few months. Then as
I made ready to serve the second set I happened to see in the front
row of the crowd to the right of the court a slight girl with blue
eyes. She was leaning forward looking at me with her mouth tense and
her fists tight closed. Somehow I had an idea that she wanted me to
win. I don't know why, because I was sure I'd never seen her before;
but I thought that perhaps she had bet a pair of gloves or a box of
candy on me. If she had, I made up my mind that she'd get them. I
started in and they said, afterwards, I never played better tennis in
my life. At any rate I beat my man.
After the game I found someone to introduce me to her and from that
moment on there was nothing else of so great consequence in my life. I
learned all about her in the course of the next few weeks. Her family,
too, was distinctly middle-class, in the sense that none of them had
ever done anything to distinguish themselves either for good or bad.
Her parents lived on a small New Hampshire farm and she had just been
graduated from the village academy and had come to town to visit her
aunt. The latter was a tall, lean woman, who, after the death of her
husband had been forced to keep lodgers to eke out a living. Ruth
showed me pictures of her mother and father, and they might have been
relatives of mine as far as looks went. The father had caught an
expression from the granite hills which most New England farmers
get--a rugged, strained look; the mother was lean and kind and
worried. I met them later and liked them.
Ruth was such a woman as my mother would have taken to; clear and
laughing on the surface, but with great depths hidden among the golden
shallows. Her experience had all been among the meadows and mountains
so that she was simple and direct and fearless in her thoughts and
acts. You never had to wonder what she meant when she spoke and when
you came to know her you didn't even have to wonder what she was
dreaming about. And yet she was never the same because she was always
growing. But the thing that woke me up most of all from the first day
I met her was the interest she took in everyone and everything. A
fellow couldn't bore Ruth if he tried. She would have the time of her
life sitting on a bench in the park or walking down the street or just
staring out the window of her aunt's front room. And that street
looked like Sunday afternoon all the week long.
I began to do some figuring when I was alone but there wasn't much
satisfaction in it. I had the clothes in my room, a good collection of
pipes, and ten dollars of my last week's salary. A man couldn't get
married on that even to a girl like Ruth who wouldn't want much. I cut
down here and there but I naturally wanted to appear well before Ruth
and so the savings went into new ties and shoes. In this way I fretted
along for a few months until I screwed my courage up to ask for
another raise. Those were prosperous days for the United Woollen and
everyone from the president to the office boy was in good humor. I
went to Morse, head of the department, and told him frankly that I
wished to get married and needed more money. That wasn't a business
reason for an increase but those of us who had worked there some years
had come to feel like one of the family and it wasn't unusual for the
company to raise a man at such a time. He said he'd see what he could
do about it and when I opened my pay envelope the next week I found an
extra five in it.
I went direct from the office to Ruth and asked her to marry me. She
didn't hang her head nor stammer but she looked me straight in the
eyes a moment longer than usual and answered:
"All right, Billy."
"Then let's go out this afternoon and see about getting a house," I
said.
I don't think a Carleton ever boarded when first married. To me it
wouldn't have seemed like getting married. I knew a suburb where some
of the men I had met at the country club lived and we went out there.
It was a beautiful June day and everything looked clean and fresh. We
found a little house of eight rooms that we knew we wanted as soon as
we saw it. It was one of a group of ten or fifteen that were all very
much alike. There was a piazza on the front and a little bit of lawn
that looked as though it had been squeezed in afterwards. In the rear
there was another strip of land where we thought we might raise some
garden stuff if we put it in boxes. The house itself had a front hall
out of which stairs led to the next floor. To the right there was a
large room separated by folding doors with another good-sized room
next to it which would naturally be used as a dining room. In the rear
of this was the kitchen and besides the door there was a slide through
which to pass the food. Upstairs there were four big rooms stretching
the whole width of the house. Above these there was a servant's room.
The whole house was prettily finished and in the two rooms down stairs
there were fireplaces which took my eye, although they weren't bigger
than coal hods. It was heated by a furnace and lighted by electricity
and there were stained glass panels either side of the front door.
The rent was forty dollars a month and I signed a three years' lease
before I left. The next week was a busy one for us both. We bought
almost a thousand dollars' worth of furniture on the installment plan
and even then we didn't seem to get more than the bare necessities. I
hadn't any idea that house furnishings cost so much. But if the bill
had come to five times that I wouldn't have cared. The installments
didn't amount to very much a week and I already saw Morse promoted and
myself filling his position at twenty-five hundred. I hadn't yet got
over the feeling I had at eighteen that life was a big adventure and
that a man with strong legs and a good back _couldn't_ lose. With Ruth
at my side I bought like a king. Though I never liked the idea of
running into debt this didn't seem like a debt. I had only to look
into her dear blue eyes to feel myself safe in buying the store
itself. Ruth herself sometimes hesitated but, as I told her, we might
as well start right and once for all as to go at it half heartedly.
The following Saturday we were married. My vacation wasn't due for
another month so we decided not to wait. The old folks came down from
the farm and we just called in a clergyman and were married in the
front parlor of the aunt's house. It was both very simple and very
solemn. For us both the ceremony meant the taking of a sacred oath of
so serious a nature as to forbid much lightheartedness. And yet I did
wish that the father and mother and aunt had not dressed in black and
cried during it all. Ruth wore a white dress and looked very beautiful
and didn't seem afraid. As for me, my knees trembled and I was chalk
white. I think it was the old people and the room, for when it was
over and we came out into the sunshine again I felt all right except a
bit light-headed. I remember that the street and the houses and the
cars seemed like very small matters.