Cline—Bunk-houses—Work on a Rock-crusher—Mexican Dancing and Music.
Immediately on arrival I reported to the superintendent in charge of the
mines at Cline. He told me to go to the men’s boarding-house and take
any cot I found vacant, and also one for my friend.
The men’s boarding-house was a two-storey frame building, of which the
upper part was divided into three dormitories, and the lower into
dining-room and kitchen. It was built so shakily that any one walking
upstairs shook the whole building, and was so roughly put together that
the wind whistled through the walls everywhere. It was terribly hot in
summer, having only a light shingle roof; and when a norther was
blowing, the cold was intense in the winter.
Besides this bunk-house there was an office building, above which the
office force slept, a house for the chief engineer, one for the foreman,
and one for the superintendent. The latter was an old Confederate
colonel, once a slave-owner, who could not get over the slave-time idea
that a “gentleman” should not work, and really must not be bothered with
“details.” I heard him say once, in answer to a query as to whether he
had time to come and look at something: “Sir, I want you to understand
that a gentleman always has time.” He really had so much time that about
a month after I arrived the company decided to give him an indefinite
holiday. They tell a story in the south about the old Confederate
veterans. A farmer, who was showing a visitor over his farm, made the
remark that all of his hands were old soldiers. Said the visitor, "You
don’t tell me! Are any of them officers?" “Two of them,” said the
farmer.
“That one there is a private, the man beyond is a major, and the man way
yonder is a colonel.” “Are they all good men?” asked the visitor. "Well,
I ain’t going to say anything against any man who fought for the South,"
said the farmer. "That private is a first-class man; but I’ve made up my
mind to one thing—I ain’t going to hire any brigadier-generals."
The Cline foreman was what is known as “poor white trash” in the south,
and his failing was drink, in which his wife often joined him. When on
these sprees they used to quarrel, and sometimes he threw her out of the
house, and sometimes she threw him. But as he did not bother the
superintendent with “details,” the colonel overlooked these matters. Of
course I found out all this later, but describe it here to give an idea
of the class of men I worked under.
The mattresses and beds in the bunk-house were indescribable, and dust
was everywhere, as the men were supposed to clean out their own rooms,
and tired men of their stamp are not over-particular. I and Cursin spent
a good part of the night fighting pests—winged and otherwise—but he was
sleeping when I got up to get my breakfast before going to work at 6
A.M. the next morning. The food was good and plentiful, and the cook was
good as camp cooks go.
I was ordered to go to one of the rock-crushers, of which there were
two, and was handed a crowbar and sledge-hammer as the working tools of
my trade. My work consisted of putting, unaided, forty-five tons of rock
per day through the crusher. When the rock stuck, I had the bar to push
it through with; and if the pieces were too big to go into the mouth of
the crusher, I had the hammer to break them. The rock came up out of the
pit in one-ton cars on an incline railway over my head, and were there
dumped on to my platform, from which I had to pick them by hand and put
them into the crusher mouth, which was about waist-high to me standing
on the platform. This extra and unnecessary work was simply owing to the
bad design, or rather absence of any design, when the plant was laid
out.
Across, on the other side of an endless chain-bucket elevator, was my
shift-mate, who, owing to his having a 6o-ton capacity crusher, had a
Mexican assistant. Both crushers dumped into the same elevator, which
carried the crushed rock up into an elevated bin, from which it was
distributed to the extractors, which I shall describe later.
I worked all the morning, wondering what young Cursin could be doing
with himself that he had not come round to visit me. But when I went to
dinner, at noon, I found a note from him, saying he could stand it no
longer, and he had gone off to catch the morning train.
I got out a pair of dogskin gloves from my trunk at noon, as my hands
were nearly raw from the rough rock, and, as they were good English
leather, by the time they wore out my hands were tough enough to stand
the strain. By night I ached in every muscle, and I had cramp in my
hands and wrists from the jar of the crusher, because, owing to lack of
knowledge and unskilfulness, I would, when jamming down a rock, get the
bar between the rock and the moving jaw, and get all the jar of the
machine stiff-armed. After a few days, however, I and my shift-mate got
on friendly terms, and he would come over to show me how to do things
right, so that the work became much easier. Each night I went to bed
almost convinced that I could not stand more, and that I would have to
quit in the morning. But in the morning I felt I could stand it one more
day; and so it went on, all the time getting easier, till the idea of
quitting went out of my mind entirely.
There were thirty odd white men working at the mine, and about one
hundred Mexicans, when I first went there, and it was certainly a tough
camp. There was a barbed-wire fence dividing the Mexican camp, which was
known as “Mexico,” from the rest of the buildings where the
boarding-houses and the rest of the factory were. Over in Mexico they
had a dance hall with a saloon attachment, and most of the men went over
there when off duty. Fights were frequent and gun-plays occasional, but
as a drunken man is seldom dangerous with a gun, no one got seriously
hurt.
The man (an American) who ran the dance hall was the son of the man in
charge of the company’s freight wagons. He was called “Bud” Towser, and
had the makings of a “bad-man” minus the “sand,” or pluck. Sober, he was
very quiet and generally polite, but drunk, or even partly so, he was
very quarrelsome, and the Mexicans were in deadly fear of him; and most
of the white men gave him the road.
One night two of the boys started a “rough-house” in his dance hall,
thinking he had gone to town, but he had returned and was back in his
room. When he burst out they made a bee-line for home, and as his gun
barked after them in the dark they carried away most of the barbed-wire
fence in their hurry.
On the 5th of May (one of the Mexican national holidays) I heard that
there was to be a big dance about a mile from the mines, at a
fence-rider’s house, and I went up with some of the boys to look on. The
dance was held on a big levelled piece of ground in front of the house,
and round this piece, which was laid out for the dancing-floor (just mud
wetted and well packed), there was a ring of posts on which were hung
lamps and lanterns to light the dancers. Outside of this again were rows
of benches for the dancers to rest on and for the onlookers; the side of
the circle towards the house, however, was left open, so that there was
a free passage to the refreshments, which were served inside, and
consisted of tamales, enchiladas, and unlimited quantities of mescal.
Mescal, or tequila, is spirit distilled from the sap of the large cactus
known as the century plant in the States, and called _maguey_ by the
Mexicans.
It was a great surprise to me to see how gracefully these Mexican
labourers danced; in spite of the fact that they were dancing on a mud
floor and wearing heavy work shoes. Waltzing seemed the favourite,
though occasionally they danced Mexican dances. The music was furnished
by a string band—all the members of which were labourers in the
mines—and was remarkably good. The whole scene was one to be remembered
for years. The bright colours of the girls’ dresses, the young men
dressed in their Sunday best, with silver-plated buttons on their short
jackets and down the outside seam of their tight-fitting trousers, their
bright-coloured sashes and enormous felt hats, with which they reserved
their partners’ seats while dancing; the ring of lamps, and the circle
of spectators blanketed like Indians; the background of oak and
mesquite; the cry of the whip-poor-will mixing occasionally with the
plaintive wail of the violin, while from the surrounding hills the
coyotes joined in chorus.
A young Mexican, when he asks a girl to dance, comes up, hat in hand, to
make his request, and if it is granted lays his hat in her seat to hold
it for her. The minute the dance is over he brings her right back to her
seat, picks up his hat and retires. There are no cozy corners, and no
talking and walking about, the etiquette being very strict, even amongst
the labouring classes.
Nearly all Mexican music is sad, but very beautiful, and they all seem
to be born musicians. I have seldom met in Texas a Mexican who could not
sing or play on some musical instrument, if it were only a mouth-organ.
Their singing I cannot admire, at least that of the men. Their main
object seems to be to sing in as high-pitched a tenor voice as they can
accomplish, and as slowly as possible. They seem to have only two kinds
of songs: either very mournful—sung slowly; or very vulgar—sung very
rapidly. Of course, all the above only applies to the Peon, or labouring
class.