CHICAGO, CHASING A WILL-O-THE-WISP
That was on Sunday morning three hundred miles south of Chicago, and at
nine-forty that night I stepped off the New Orleans and Chicago fast
mail into a different world. It was, I believe, the coldest night that I
had ever experienced. The city was new and strange to me and I wandered
here and there for hours before I finally found my brother's address on
Armour Avenue. But the wandering and anxiety mattered little, for I was
in the great city where I intended beginning my career, and felt that
bigger things were in store for me.
The next day my brother's landlady appeared to take a good deal of
interest in me and encouraged me so that I became quite confidential,
and told her of my ambitions for the future and that it was my intention
to work, save my money and eventually become a property owner. I was
rather chagrined later, however, to find that she had repeated all this
to my brother and he gave me a good round scolding, accompanied by the
unsolicited advice that if I would keep my mouth shut people wouldn't
know I was so green. He had been traveling as a waiter on an eastern
railroad dining car, but in a fit of independence--which had always been
characteristic of him--had quit, and now in mid-winter, was out of a
job. He was not enthusiastic concerning my presence in the city and I
had found him broke, but with a lot of fine clothes and a diamond or
two. Most folks from the country don't value good clothes and diamonds
in the way city folks do and I, for one, didn't think much of his
finery.
I was greatly disappointed, for I had anticipated that my big brother
would have accumulated some property or become master of a bank account
during these five or six years he had been away from home. He seemed to
sense this disappointment and became more irritated at my presence and
finally wrote home to my parents--who had recently moved to
Kansas--charging me with the crime of being a big, awkward, ignorant
kid, unsophisticated in the ways of the world, and especially of the
city; that I was likely to end my "career" by running over a street car
and permitting the city to irretrievably lose me, or something equally
as bad. When I heard from my mother she was worried and begged me to
come home. I knew the folks at home shared my brother's opinion of me
and believed all he had told them, so I had a good laugh all to myself
in spite of the depressing effect it had on me. However, there was the
reaction, and when it set in I became heartsick and discouraged and then
and there became personally acquainted with the "blues", who gave me
their undivided attention for some time after that.
The following Sunday I expected him to take me to church with him, but
he didn't. He went alone, wearing his five dollar hat, fifteen dollar
made-to-measure shoes, forty-five dollar coat and vest, eleven dollar
trousers, fifty dollar tweed overcoat and his diamonds. I found my way
to church alone and when I saw him sitting reservedly in an opposite
pew, I felt snubbed and my heart sank. However, only momentarily, for a
new light dawned upon me and I saw the snobbery and folly of it all and
resolved that some day I would rise head and shoulders above that
foolish, four-flushing brother of mine in real and material success.
I finally secured irregular employment at the Union Stock Yards. The
wages at that time were not the best. Common labor a dollar-fifty per
day and the hours very irregular. Some days I was called for duty at
five in the morning and laid off at three in the afternoon or called
again at eight in the evening to work until nine the same evening. I
soon found the mere getting of jobs to be quite easy. It was getting a
desirable one that gave me trouble. However, when I first went to the
yards and looked at the crowds waiting before the office in quest of
employment, I must confess I felt rather discouraged, but my new
surroundings and that indefinable interesting feature about these crowds
with their diversity of nationalities and ambitions, made me forget my
own little disappointments. Most all new arrivals, whether skilled or
unskilled workmen, seeking "jobs" in the city find their way to the
yards. Thousands of unskilled laborers are employed here and it seems to
be the Mecca for the down-and-out who wander thither in a last effort to
obtain employment.
The people with whom I stopped belonged to the servant class and lived
neatly in their Armour Avenue flat. The different classes of people who
make up the population of a great city are segregated more by their
occupations than anything else. The laborers usually live in a laborer's
neighborhood. Tradesmen find it more agreeable among their fellow
workmen and the same is true of the servants and others. I found that
employment which soiled the clothes and face and hands was out of
keeping among the people with whom I lived, so after trying first one
job, then another, I went to Joliet, Illinois, to work out my fortune in
the steel mills of that town. I was told that at that place was an
excellent opportunity to learn a trade, but after getting only the very
roughest kind of work to do around the mills, such as wrecking and
carrying all kinds of broken iron and digging in a canal along with a
lot of jabbering foreigners whose English vocabulary consisted of but
one word--their laborer's number. It is needless to say that I saw
little chance of learning a trade at any very early date.
Pay day "happened" every two weeks with two weeks held back. If I quit
it would be three weeks before I could get my wages, but was informed of
a scheme by which I could get my money, by telling the foreman that I
was going to leave the state. Accordingly, I approached the renowned
imbecile and told him that I was going to California and would have to
quit and would like to get my pay. "Pay day is every two weeks, so be
sure to get back in time," he answered in that officious manner so
peculiar to foremen. I had only four dollars coming, so I quit anyway.
That evening I became the recipient of the illuminating information
that if I would apply at the coal chutes I would find better employment
as well as receive better wages. I sought out the fellow in charge, a
big colored man weighing about two hundred pounds, who gave me work
cracking and heaving coal into the chute at a dollar-fifty per
twenty-five tons.
"Gracious", I expostulated. "A man can't do all of that in a day".
"Pooh", and he waved his big hands depreciatingly, "I have heaved forty
tons with small effort".
I decided to go to work that day, but with many misgivings as to
cracking and shoveling twenty-five tons of coal. The first day I
managed, by dint of hard labor, to crack and heave eighteen tons out of
a box car, for which I received the munificent sum of one dollar, and
the next day I fell to sixteen tons and likewise to eighty-nine cents.
The contractor who superintended the coal business bought me a drink in
a nearby saloon, and as I drank it with a gulp he patted me on the
shoulder, saying, "Now, after the third day, son, you begin to improve
and at the end of a week you can heave thirty tons a day as easily as a
clock ticking the time". I thought he was going to add that I would be
shoveling forty tons like Big Jim, the fellow who gave me the job, but I
cut him off by telling him that I'd resign before I became so
proficient.
I had to send for more money to pay my board. My brother, being my
banker, sent a statement of my account, showing that I had to date just
twenty-five dollars, and the statement seemed to read coldly between the
lines that I would soon be broke, out of a job, and what then? I felt
very serious about the matter and when I returned to Chicago I had lost
some of my confidence regarding my future. Mrs. Nelson, the landlady,
boasted that her husband made twenty dollars per week; showed me her
diamonds and spoke so very highly of my brother, that I suspicioned that
she admired him a great deal, and that he was in no immediate danger of
losing his room even when he was out of work and unable to meet his
obligations.
My next step was to let an employment agency swindle me out of two
dollars. Their system was quite unique, and, I presume, legitimate. They
persuaded the applicant to deposit three dollars as a guarantee of good
faith, after which they were to find a position for him. A given
percentage was also to be taken from the wages for a certain length of
time. Some of these agencies may have been all right, but my old friend,
the hoodoo, led me to one that was an open fraud. After the person
seeking employment has been sent to several places for imaginary
positions that prove to be only myths, the agency offers to give back a
dollar and the disgusted applicant is usually glad to get it. I, myself,
being one of many of these unfortunates.
I then tried the newspaper ads. There is usually some particular paper
in any large city that makes a specialty of want advertisements. I was
told, as was necessary, to stand at the door when the paper came from
the press, grab a copy, choose an ad that seemed promising and run like
wild for the address given. I had no trade, so turned to the
miscellaneous column, and as I had no references I looked for a place
where none were required. If the address was near I would run as fast as
the crowded street and the speed laws would permit, but always found
upon arrival that someone had just either been accepted ahead of me, or
had been there a week. I having run down an old ad that had been
permitted to run for that time. About the only difference I found
between the newspapers and the employment agencies was that I didn't
have to pay three dollars for the experience.
I now realized the disadvantages of being an unskilled laborer, and had
grown weary of chasing a "will-o-the-wisp" and one day while talking to
a small Indian-looking negro I remarked that I wished I could find a job
in some suburb shining shoes in a barber shop or something that would
take me away from Chicago and its dilly-dally jobs for awhile.
"I know where you can get a job like that", he answered, thoughtfully.
"Where?" I asked eagerly.
"Why, out at Eaton", he went on, "a suburb about twenty-five miles west.
A fellow wanted me to go but I don't want to leave Chicago".
I found that most of the colored people with whom I had become
acquainted who lived in Chicago very long were similarly reluctant about
leaving, but I was ready to go anywhere. So my new friend took me over
to a barber supply house on Clark street, where a man gave me the name
of the barber at Eaton and told me to come by in the morning and he'd
give me a ticket to the place. When I got on the street again I felt so
happy and grateful to my friend for the information, that I gave the
little mulatto a half dollar, all the money I had with me, and had to
walk the forty blocks to my room. Here I filled my old grip and the next
morning "beat it" for Eaton, arriving there on the first of May, and a
cold, bleak, spring morning it was. I found the shop without any
trouble--a dingy little place with two chairs. The proprietor, a drawn,
unhappy looking creature, and a hawkish looking German assistant
welcomed me cordially. They seemed to need company. The proprietor led
me upstairs to a room that I could have free with an oil stove and table
where I could cook--so I made arrangements to "bach".
I received no wages, but was allowed to retain all I made "shining". I
had acquired some experience shining shoes on the streets of M--pls with
a home-made box--getting on my knees whenever I got a customer. "Shining
shoes" is not usually considered an advanced or technical occupation
requiring skill. However, if properly conducted it can be the making of
a good solicitor. While Eaton was a suburb it was also a country town
and this shop was never patronized by any of the metropolitan class who
made their homes there, but principally by the country class who do not
evidence their city pride by the polish of their shoes. Few city people
allow their shoes to go unpolished and I wasn't long in finding it out,
and when I did I had something to say to the men who went by, well
dressed but with dirty shoes. If I could argue them into stopping, if
only for a moment, I could nearly always succeed in getting them into
the chair.
Business, however, was dull and I began taking jobs in the country from
the farmers, working through the day and getting back to the shop for
the evening. This, however, was short lived, for I was unaccustomed to
farm work since leaving home and found it extremely difficult. My first
work in the country was pitching timothy hay side-by-side with a girl of
sixteen, who knew how to pitch hay. I thought it would be quite romantic
before I started, but before night came I had changed my mind. The man
on the wagon would drive alongside a big cock of sweet smelling hay and
the girl would stick her fork partly to one side of the hay cock and
show me how to put my fork into the other. I was left-handed while she
was right, and with our backs to the wagon we could make a heavy lift
and when the hay was directly overhead we'd turn and face each other and
over the load would go onto the wagon. Toward evening the loads thus
balanced seemed to me as heavy as the load of Atlas bearing the earth. I
am sure my face disclosed the fatigue and strain under which I labored,
for it was clearly reflected in the knowing grin of my companion. I drew
my pay that night on the excuse of having to get an overall suit,
promising to be back at a quarter to seven the next morning.
Then I tried shocking oats along with a boy of about twelve, a girl of
fourteen and the farmer's wife. The way those two children did
work,--Whew! I was so glad when a shower came up about noon that I
refrained from shouting with difficulty. I drew my pay this time to get
some gloves, and promised to be back as soon as it dried. The next
morning I felt so sore and stiff as the result of my two days'
experience in the harvest fields, that I forgot all about my promise to
return and decided to stay in Eaton.
It was in Eaton that I started my first bank account. The little
twenty-dollar certificate of deposit opened my mind to different things
entirely. I would look at it until I had day dreams. During the three
months I spent in Eaton I laid the foundation of a future. Simple as it
was, it led me into channels which carried me away from my race and into
a life fraught with excitement; a life that gave experiences and other
things I had never dreamed of. I had started a bank account of twenty
dollars and I found myself wanting one of thirty, and to my surprise the
desire seemed to increase. This desire fathered my plans to become a
porter on a P----n car. A position I diligently sought and applied for
between such odd jobs about town as mowing lawns, washing windows,
scrubbing floors and a variety of others that kept me quite busy. Taking
the work, if I could, by contract, thus permitting me to use my own time
and to work as hard as I desired to finish. I found that by this plan I
could make money faster and easier than by working in the country.
I was finally rewarded by being given a run on a parlor car by a road
that reached many summer resorts in southern Wisconsin. Here I skimped
along on a run that went out every Friday and Saturday, returning on
Monday morning. The regular salary was forty dollars per month, but as I
never put in more than half the time I barely made twenty dollars, and
altho' I made a little "on the side" in the way of tips I had to draw on
the money I had saved in Eaton.