BARRING two or three tall buildings, the city of Pittsburgh was then of
a simple and homelike aspect. A few blackened church spires, a small
dark city hall and an old market-place, a long stretch of blast
furnaces, black as night, and the lightly constructed bridges over the
rivers, gave it all an airy grace and charm.
Since the houses up here were very simple, mostly working-men’s
cottages, and the streets back followed the crests of hills twisting and
winding as they went and providing in consequence the most startling and
effective views of green hills and mountains beyond, I decided that
should I be so fortunate as to secure work I would move over here. It
would be like living in a mountain resort, and most inexpensively.
I descended and took a car which followed the Monongahela upstream to
Homestead, and here for the first time had a view of that enormous steel
plant which only recently (June to December, 1892) had played such a
great part in the industrial drama of America. The details of the
quarrel were fairly fresh in my mind: how the Carnegie Steel Company had
planned, with the technicalities of a wage-scale readjustment as an
excuse, to break the power of the Amalgamated Steel Workers, who were
becoming too forceful and who were best organized in their plant, and
how the Amalgamated, resenting the introduction of three hundred
Pinkerton guards to “protect” the plant, had attacked them, killing
several and injuring others, and so permitting the introduction of the
State militia, which speedily and permanently broke the power of the
strikers. They could only wait then and starve, and so they had waited
and starved for six months, when they finally returned to work, such of
them as would be received. When I reached there in April, 1894, the
battle was already fifteen months past, but the feeling was still alive.
I did not then know what it was about this town of Homestead that was so
depressing, but in the six months of my stay here I found that it was a
compound of a sense of defeat and sullen despair. The men had not
forgotten. Even then the company was busy, and had been for months,
importing Poles, Hungarians, Lithuanians, to take the places of the
ousted strikers. Whole colonies were already here, housed under the most
unsatisfactory conditions, and more were coming. Hence the despair of
those who had been defeated.
Along the river sprawled for a quarter of a mile or more the huge low
length of the furnaces, great black bottle-like affairs with rows of
stacks and long low sheds or buildings paralleling them, sheds from
which came a continuous hammering and sputtering and the glow of red
fire. The whole was shrouded by a pall of gray smoke, even in the bright
sunshine. Above the plant, on a slope which rose steeply behind it, were
a few moderately attractive dwellings grouped about two small parks, the
trees of which were languishing for want of air. Behind and to the sides
of these were the spires of several churches, those soporifics against
failure and despair. Turning up side streets one found, invariably,
uniform frame houses, closely built and dulled by smoke and grime, and
below, on the flats behind the mill, were cluttered alleys so unsightly
and unsanitary as to shock me into the belief that I was once more
witnessing the lowest phases of Chicago slum-life, the worst I had ever
seen. The streets were mere mud-tracks. Where there were trees (and
there were few) they were dwarfed and their foliage withered by a
metallic fume which was over all. Though the sun was bright at the top
of the hill, down here it was gray, almost cloudy, at best a filtered
dull gold haze.
The place held me until night. I browsed about its saloons, of which
there was a large number, most of them idle during the drift of the
afternoon. The open gates of the mill held my interest also, for through
them I could see furnaces, huge cranes, switching engines, cars of
molten iron being hauled to and fro, and mountains of powdered iron ore
and scrap iron piled here and there awaiting the hour of new birth in
the smelting vats. When the sun had gone down, and I had watched a shift
of men coming out with their buckets and coats over their arms, and
other hundreds entering in a rush, I returned to the city with a sense
of the weight and breadth and depth of huge effort. Here bridges and
rail and plate steel were made for all the world. But of all these units
that dwelt and labored here scarce a fraction seemed even to sense a
portion of the meaning of all they did. I knew that Carnegie had become
a multi-millionaire, as had Phipps and others, and that he was beginning
to give libraries, that Phipps had already given several floral
conservatories, and that their “lobbies” in Congress were even then
bartering for the patronage of the government on their terms; but the
poor units in these hovels at Homestead—what did they know?
On another day I explored the east end of Pittsburgh, which was the
exclusive residence section of the city and a contrast to such hovels
and deprivations as I had witnessed at Homestead and among the shacks
across the Monongahela and below Mt. Washington. Never in my life,
neither before nor since, in New York, Chicago or elsewhere, was the
vast gap which divides the rich from the poor in America so vividly and
forcefully brought home to me. I had seen on my map a park called
Schenley, and thinking that it might be interesting I made my way out a
main thoroughfare called (quite appropriately, I think) Fifth Avenue,
lined with some of the finest residences of the city. Never did the mere
possession of wealth impress me so keenly. Here were homes of the most
imposing character, huge, verandaed, tree-shaded, with immense lawns,
great stone or iron or hedge fences and formal gardens and walks of a
most ornate character. It was a region of well-curbed, well-drained and
well-paved thoroughfares. Even the street-lamps were of a better design
than elsewhere, so eager was a young and democratic municipality to see
that superior living conditions were provided for the rich. There were
avenues lined with well-cropped trees, and at every turn one encountered
expensive carriages, their horses jingling silver or gold-gilt harness,
their front seats occupied by one or two footmen in livery, while
reclining was Madam or Sir, or both, gazing condescendingly upon the all
too comfortable world about them.
In Schenley Park was a huge and interesting arboretum or botanical
garden under glass, a most oriental affair given by Phipps of the
Carnegie Company. A large graceful library of white limestone, perhaps
four or five times the size of the one in Allegheny, given by Andrew
Carnegie, was in process of construction. And he was another of the
chief beneficiaries of Homestead, the possessor of a great house in this
region, another in New York and still another in Scotland, a man for
whom the unwitting “Pinkertons” and contending strikers had been killed.
Like huge ribbons of fire these and other names of powerful steel
men—the Olivers, Thaws, Fricks, Thompsons—seemed to rise and band the
sky. It seemed astonishing to me that some men could thus rise and soar
about the heavens like eagles, while others, drab sparrows all, could
only pick among the offal of the hot ways below. What were these things
called democracy and equality about which men prated? Had they any basis
in fact? There was constant palaver about the equality of opportunity
which gave such men as these their chance, but I could not help
speculating as to the lack of equality of opportunity these men created
for others once their equality at the top had made them. If equality of
opportunity had been so excellent for them why not for others,
especially those in their immediate care? True, all men had not the
brains to seize upon and make use of that which was put before them, but
again, not all men of brains had the blessing of opportunity as had
these few men. Strength, as I felt, should not be too arrogant or too
forgetful of the accident or chance by which it had arrived. It might do
something for the poor—pay them decent living wages, for instance. Were
these giants planning to subject their sons and daughters to the same
“equality of opportunity” which had confronted them at the start and
which they were so eager to recommend to the attention of others? Not at
all. In this very neighborhood I passed an exclusive private school for
girls, with great grounds and a beautiful wall—another sample of
equality of opportunity.
On the fourth day of my stay here I called again at the _Dispatch_
office and was given a position, but only after the arrival of a
telegram from Toledo offering me work at eighteen a week. Now I had long
since passed out of the eighteen-dollar stage of reporting, and this was
by no means a comforting message. If I could show it to the _Dispatch_
city editor, I reasoned, it would probably hasten his decision to accept
me, but also he might consider eighteen dollars as a rate of pay
acceptable to me and would offer no more. I decided not to use it just
then but to go first and see if anything had come about in my favor.
“Nothing yet,” he said on seeing me. “Drop around tomorrow or Saturday.
I’m sure to know then one way or the other.”
I went out and in the doorway below stood and meditated. What was I to
do? If I delayed too long my friend in Toledo would not be able to do
anything for me, and if I showed this message it would fix my salary at
a place below that which I felt I deserved. I finally hit upon the idea
of changing the eighteen to twenty-five and went to a telegraph office
to find some girl to rewrite it for me. Not seeing a girl I would be
willing to approach, I worked over it myself, carefully erasing and
changing until the twenty-five, while a little forced and scraggly,
looked fairly natural. With this in my pocket I returned to the
_Dispatch_ this same afternoon, and told the city editor with as great
an air of assurance as I could achieve that I had just received this
message and was a little uncertain as to what to do about it. “The fact
is,” I said, “I have started from the West to go East. New York is my
eventual goal, unless I find a good place this side of it. But I’m up
against it now and unless I can do something here I might as well go
back there for the present. I wouldn’t show you this except that I must
answer it tonight.”
He read it and looked at me uncertainly. Finally he got up, told me to
wait a minute, and went through a nearby door. In a minute or two he
returned and said: “Well, that’s all right. We can do as well as that,
anyhow, if you want to stay at that rate.”
“All right,” I replied as nonchalantly as I could. “When do I start?”
“Come around tomorrow at twelve. I may not have anything for you, but
I’ll carry you for a day or two until I have.”
I trotted down the nearby steps as fast as my feet would carry me,
anxious to get out of his sight so that I might congratulate myself
freely. I hurried to a telegraph office to reject my friend’s offer. To
celebrate my cleverness and success I indulged in a good meal at one of
the best restaurants. Here I sat, and to prepare myself for my work
examined that day’s _Dispatch_, as well as the other papers, with a view
to unraveling their method of treating a feature or a striking piece of
news, also to discover what they considered a feature. By nine or ten I
had solved that mystery as well as I could, and then to quiet my excited
nerves I walked about the business section, finally crossing to Mt.
Washington so as to view the lighted city at night from this great
height. It was radiantly clear up there, and a young moon shining, and I
had the pleasure of looking down upon as wonderful a night panorama as I
have ever seen, a winking and fluttering field of diamonds that
outrivaled the sky itself. As far as the eye could see were these lamps
blinking and winking, and overhead was another glistering field of
stars. Below was that enormous group of stacks with their red tongues
waving in the wind. Far up the Monongahela, where lay Homestead and
McKeesport and Braddock and Swissvale, other glows of red fire indicated
where huge furnaces were blazing and boiling in the night. I thought of
the nest of slums I had seen at Homestead, of those fine houses in the
east end, and of Carnegie with his libraries, of Phipps with his glass
conservatories. How to get up in the world and be somebody was my own
thought now, and yet I knew that wealth was not for me. The best I
should ever do was to think and dream, standing aloof as a spectator.
The next day I began work on the _Dispatch_ and for six months was a
part of it, beginning with ordinary news reporting, but gradually taking
up the task of preparing original column features, first for the daily
and later for the Sunday issue. Still later, not long before I left, I
was by way of being an unpaid assistant to the dramatic editor, and a
traveling correspondent.
What impressed me most was the peculiar character of the city and the
newspaper world here, the more or less somnolent nature of its
population (apart from the steel companies and their employees) and the
genial and sociable character of the newspaper men. Never had I
encountered more intelligent or helpful or companionable albeit cynical
men than I found here. They knew the world, and their opportunities for
studying public as well as private impulses and desires and contrasting
them with public and private performances were so great as to make them
puzzled if not always accurate judges of affairs and events. One can
always talk to a newspaper man, I think, with the full confidence that
one is talking to a man who is at least free of moralistic mush. Nearly
everything in connection with those trashy romances of justice, truth,
mercy, patriotism, public profession of all sorts, is already and
forever gone if they have been in the business for any length of time.
The religionist is seen by them for what he is: a swallower of romance
or a masquerader looking to profit and preferment. Of the politician,
they know or believe but one thing: that he is out for himself, a
trickster artfully juggling with the moods and passions and ignorance of
the public. Judges are men who have by some chance or other secured good
positions and are careful to trim their sails according to the moods and
passions of the strongest element in any community or nation in which
they chance to be. The arts are in the main to be respected, when they
are not frankly confessed to be enigmas.
In a very little while I came to be on friendly terms with the men of
this and some other papers, men who, because of their intimate contact
with local political and social conditions, were well fitted to
enlighten me as to the exact economic and political conditions here. Two
in particular, the political and labor men of this paper were most
helpful. The former, a large, genial, commercial-drummer type, who might
also have made an excellent theatrical manager or promoter, provided me
with a clear insight into the general cleavage of local and State
politics and personalities. I liked him very much. The other, the labor
man, was a slow, silent, dark, square-shouldered and almost
square-headed youth, who drifted in and out of the office irregularly.
He it was who attended, when permitted by the working people themselves,
all labor meetings in the city or elsewhere, as far east at times as the
hard coal regions about Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. As he himself told
me, he was the paper’s sole authority for such comments or assertions as
it dared to make in connection with the mining of coal and the
manufacture of steel. He was an intense sympathizer with labor, but not
so much with organized as with unorganized workers. He believed that
labor here had two years before lost a most important battle, one which
would show in its contests with money in the future: which was true. He
pretended to know that there was a vast movement on foot among the
moneyed elements in America to cripple if not utterly destroy organized
labor, and to that end he assured me once that all the great steel and
coal and oil magnates were in a conspiracy to flood the country with
cheap foreign labor, which they had lured or were luring here by all
sorts of dishonest devices; once here, these immigrants were to be used
to break the demand of better-paid and more intelligent labor. He
pretended to know that in the coal and steel regions thousands had
already been introduced and more were on their way, and that all such
devices as showy churches and schools for defectives, etc., were used to
keep ignorant and tame those already here.
“But you can’t say anything about it in Pittsburgh,” he said to me. “If
I should talk I’d have to get out of here. The papers here won’t use a
thing unfavorable to the magnates in any of these fields. I write all
sorts of things, but they never get in.”
He read the _Congressional Record_ daily, as well as various radical
papers from different parts of the country, and was constantly calling
my attention to statistics and incidents which proved that the
workingman was being most unjustly put upon and undermined; but he never
did it in any urgent or disturbed manner. Rather, he seemed to be
profoundly convinced that the cause of the workers everywhere in America
was hopeless. They hadn’t the subtlety and the force and the innate
cruelty of those who ruled them. They were given to religious and
educational illusions, the parochial school and church paper, which left
them helpless. In the course of time, because I expressed interest in
and sympathy for these people, he took me into various mill slums in and
near the city to see how they lived.
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