people seem to think this means a Scotch parent on one side and an
Irish upon the other, it may be well to state that the Scotch-Irish
are the descendants of Scotch people who immigrated to Ireland. But it
ought not to be forgotten that the mountain whites are the descendants
of Scotch-Irish of two centuries ago, a very different people from the
Scotch-Irish of to-day. Here in the mountains we find some three
millions, often without schools, and waiting sometimes for years for a
funeral sermon after the person has been buried. Towns can be found
over seventy years old organized with a court-house and no church.
"Yes," they say, "the Methodists started one some years ago; but the
Baptists threw the timber into the Cumberland, and sence then we ain't
had no church."
Here one of our minute-men had two horses shot under him, and another
missionary was nearly killed.
Here you may find families of twenty and more, living in a wretchedly
constructed house, on bacon and corn-meal, hoe-cakes, and dodgers. I
started once to stay over night in one of these houses. As we came
near to the place, I found that my host was a school-teacher. He had
taught twenty-two schools. He meant by this that he had taught that
many years. The kitchen was as black as smoke could make it; the
butter was stringy, caused by the cows eating cotton-seed; and my seat
a plank worn smooth by use, with legs which stuck up through it, which
would have been better had they been worn more. I suppose in some way
I involuntarily showed my feelings; for the woman noticed it, and
said, "Yer oughter put up with one night what we uns have ter all the
time."
I said "That's the trouble; I could when I got used to it."
The room I slept in had a hole in the end that you could drive a span
of horses through. It had been left for a chimney. As I found out that
the day before a rattlesnake had come into the house, and the good
woman had to defend herself with the fire-poker, I did not sleep so
well as I might. The possibility of a rattler in the dark, and no
poker handy, filled me with uneasy thoughts; but as people get up with
the sun, the time passed, and I was glad to get back to civilized
life.
I noticed that the cotton was ridged up with concave rows of earth,
which was covered with rank weeds. This was done to keep the water
from running off too quickly. I asked whether sage would not hold the
ridges as good as weeds. "Oh, yes!" they said, and it brought a dollar
a pound; but they had never thought of that.
Some of the States do not have seventy school-days in the year; and
the whole South to-day has not as many public libraries as the State
of Massachusetts. A man needs perfect health to enjoy some of the
pastoral work which he must do if he intends making a success among
the mountain whites. One thing should never be forgotten. The poor
whites of the mountains were loyal to the Union, and out from this
type came the greatest American we have had, Abraham Lincoln.
Here, then, is plenty of material to work on,--families big enough to
start a small church, and who do not send to England for pug-dogs for
lack of progeny. Here is the rich fields, and here must the race be
lifted before the millions of blacks can have a chance. Education must
be pushed; and then will come a period of scepticism, for this people
are fifty years behind the times.
Several people were sitting on a large veranda; and one man, a
preacher lately from Texas, was telling us of his visit. Among other
things he spoke of the cyclone-pits, and said, "Seems to me, brother,
a man can't have much faith in God who would go into a pit. I would
not; would you?"
"No," replied mine host. "Men seem to me to be losing faith. I once
raised a woman up by prayer that three doctors had given up. Aunt
Sally, have ye any of that liver invigorator? I kind of feel as if I
needed some."
Here was a man who had prayed a woman out of the jaws of death,
calling for liver medicine. None of them seemed to see the incongruity
of it. One good old deacon that I knew horrified his pastor, who was a
strong temperance man, by furnishing the communion with rye whiskey.
The old man meant all right; but he had neglected to replenish the
wine, and thought something of a spirituous nature was needed, and so
brought the whiskey.
It is a fact worth noting, that we have to-day, in the year 1895,
millions of men living in conditions as primitive as those of the
eighteenth century, while in the same land we are building houses
which are lighted and heated with electricity; that some men worship
in houses built of logs, without glass windows, and others worship in
buildings that cost millions; that in the former case men have lived
in this way for over two hundred years, and the latter less than fifty
since the Indian's tepee was the only dwelling in sight; that to-day
may be seen the prairie schooner drawn by horses, oxen, or mules, and
in one case a horse, a cow, and a mule, the little shanty on wheels,
the man sitting in the doorway driving, and his wife cooking the
dinner. But so it is. We have all the varieties of habitation, from
the dugout of the prairie to the half-million summer cottage at Bar
Harbor; and from a single Indian pony, we have all kinds of
locomotion, up to the vestibuled palace on wheels.
That I may not seem to be over stating the condition of the mountain
whites, and the dangers among our own people, I close with a quotation
from Dr. Smart's Saratoga address:--
"Let me tell you of just one experiment of letting a people
alone, and its result. Shall we trust that American
institutions and American ideas, that the press and schools,
will ultimately Americanize them? In the eastern part of
Kentucky, in the western part of North Carolina and West
Virginia, there is a section of country about the size of
New Hampshire and New York,--one of the darkest spots on the
map of the South. The people living there have been there
for over a hundred years, and are of Scotch-Irish
extraction. Whole counties can be found in which there is
not a single wagon-road. Most of the houses are of one
story, without a window, or only a small one; and the door
has to be kept open to let in the light. I have it from good
authority that when the first schoolmistress went there to
teach, she stipulated that she should have a room with a
window in it, and a lock to the door. Very few of the people
can read or write. They have no newspapers, no modern
appliances for agriculture, no connection with the world
outside and around them. This is the land of the
'moonshiner.' They love whiskey, and so they manufacture it.
The pistol and bowie-knife are judge and sheriff. Bloodshed
is common, and barbarism a normal state of society. These
men were not slaveholders in the times before the war. They
were as loyal to the Union as any others who fought for the
old flag, and they served in the Union army when they got a
chance. When Bishop Smith in a large and influential
meeting spoke of them, he touched the Southern and Kentucky
pride, especially when he pointed out what a moral and
spiritual blot they were upon the South. Now, why are they
there a hundred years behind us in every respect? Why are
they sunk so low? Simply because they have been let alone.
They are just as much separated from this land, without any
share in its marvellous progress, as if a Chinese wall had
been built around them. They have been let alone; and
American institutions, American schools, and the American
press, have flowed around them and beyond them without
effect."
XXV.
CHRISTIAN WORK IN A LUMBER-TOWN.
Until a few years ago I knew little or nothing of mill-towns or
lumber-camps. I had seen a saw-mill that cut its thousand feet a day
when running, and it was generally connected with some farm through
which ran a stream. It was a very innocent affair. But in 1889 I saw
for the first time the great forests of pine, and became acquainted
with part of the immense army of lumbermen. Michigan alone had at that
time some forty thousand; Wisconsin has as many; Georgia, Alabama, and
Louisiana are now engaged in a vast work; and when we add the great
States of Oregon and Washington, with their almost illimitable
forests, we feel that we are speaking within bounds when we say an
immense army.
The one great difficulty of the problem is the transitory character of
the work--like Count Rumford's stoves, if they could only have been
patented and money made out of them, every house would use them; so if
the lumber village had come to stay, many a church would have gone in
and built. But more than once a man in authority has said, "Oh, I have
looked that field over, and it won't amount to much." No one who has
not had experience in the field can form any adequate idea of its
vastness or its crying needs. The one great trouble of the whole
question is the massing of so many men away from the softening
influence of wife and mother. It is unnatural; and nature's laws, as
sacred as the Decalogue, are broken in unnatural crimes, and sins
unknown to the common run of men.
The lumber business may be divided into three distinct classes of
workers,--the mill-men, the camp-men, and the river-men. The last are
the smallest company, but the hardest to reach. They flit from stream
to river, from the river to the lake, from scenes of sylvan beauty to
the low groggery--and worse. Their temporary home is often made of
blackened logs papered with _Police Gazettes_, which come in vast
numbers, and form the largest part of their not very select reading.
Books of the Zola type, but without their literary excellence, are
legion. Good books and good literature would be a boon in these camps.
To give you an idea of the rapid march of the lumber-camp, come with
me into the primeval forest. It is a winter day. The snow is deep, and
the lordly pines are dressed like brides in purest white; one would
think, to look at their pendent branches, that Praxiteles and all his
pupils had worked for a century in sculpturing these lovely forms. Not
a sound is heard save our sleigh-bells, or some chattering squirrel
that leaps lightly over the powdery snow; a gun fired would bring down
a harmless avalanche. It is a sight of unsurpassed beauty in nature's
privacy; but alas, how soon the change!
An army of brawny men invade the lovely scene. Rude houses of logs are
quickly erected; and men with axe and saw soon change the view, and
with peavey and cant-hook the logs are loaded and off for the rollway.
Inside the largest house are bunks, one above another; two huge stoves
with great iron cylinders, one at each end, give warmth; while in
picturesque confusion, socks and red mackinaws and shirts hang
steaming by the dozens. There is a cockloft, where the men write their
letters, and rude benches, where they sit and smoke and tell yarns
till bedtime. In a few weeks at the farthest the grand old forest is a
wreck; a few scrubby oaks or dwindling beech-trees are all that are
left. The buildings rot down, the roofs tumble in, and a few
camp-stragglers trying to get a living out of the stumpy ground are
all that are left; and solitude reigns supreme.
On stormy days hundreds of the men go into the nearest village, and
sin revels in excess. In many a small town, mothers call their little
ones in from the streets, which are soon full of men drunken and
swearing, ready for fight or worse. At such times they hold the
village in a reign of terror, and often commit crimes of a shocking
nature, and no officer dares molest them. A stranger coming at such a
time would need to conduct himself very discreetly or he would get
into trouble. A volume might be filled with the outrageous things done
in these small lumber-towns. Ireland is not the only place that
suffers from absentee landlords.
The condition of the children is pitiable, brought up in an atmosphere
of drunkenness and debauchery; swearing as natural as breathing;
houses packed so closely that you can reach across from one window to
another. The refuse is often emptied between the houses; diseases of
all kinds flourish, and death is ever busy. Eight or ten nationalities
are often found in these towns,--men who cannot spell their names,
and men who went to St. Paul's and admired Canon Liddon, or New York
men that went to Beecher's church.
Here a house which cost less than a hundred dollars, and inside of it
an organ costing one hundred and twenty-five dollars, and a
forty-dollar encyclopædia. The next house is divided by stalls like a
stable, with bed in one, stove in another, and kitchen in the third.
With a population as mixed as this, and in constant flux, what, you
ask, can the church do? I answer, much, very much, if you can only get
a church there; but when the church which gives much more than any
other gives but a quarter of a cent per day per member, is it any
wonder that hundreds of churchless lumber-towns call in vain for help
from the sanctuary? Some small villages can be found where every
family is living in unlawful relations.
Now, remember this, the lumberman is made of the same clay that we
are, and it is his environment that brings to the front the worst
that is in him. He is reached by practical Christianity as easily as
any other man. The shame and reproach belong to us for neglecting him,
and there is no other way that we so dishonor him whom we call Master
as to say his commands are not practicable. Is it asking too much from
the rich men who get their money by the toil of these men, that out of
their millions they should spend thousands for the moral welfare of
those who make them rich? And yet too often they do not even know
their own foremen, and in many cases have never visited the property
they own.
I once asked a rich lumber-man for a subscription for missions, saying
I was sorry he was not at the church when I took up my collection.
"Jinks! I am glad I was not there," he said; "I gave away ten dollars
Saturday night."
Now, this man had been cutting off from his land for thirty years, and
had just sold a quarter of a million dollars' worth of it, and still
had land left. But on the other hand, be it known that the men in
these villages who make no profession of religion actually give dollar
for dollar with the Christian church-members to sustain the frontier
churches. Saloon-keepers, and often Roman Catholics, help to support
the missionary church.
The mission churches of the lumber regions are like springs in the
desert, but for which the traveller would die on his way; and
thousands of church-members scattered from ocean to ocean were born of
the Spirit in some one of these little churches that did brave work in
a transient town.
To do work in these places aright, one must drop all denominational
nonsense,--be as ready to pray and work with the dying Roman Catholic
as with a member of his own church, and do as I did,--lend the church
building to the priest, because disease in the town would not permit
of using the private houses at the time, and so help to fill up the
gap between us and the old mother that nursed us a thousand years.
In every new town, in every camp, should be a standing notice, "No
cranks need apply."
Here is a brawny man who does not like the church. He hates the name
of preacher, and threatens that he had better not call at his house.
Scarlet fever takes his children down. The despised preacher, armed
with a basket of good things, raps at the door. Pat opens it.
"Good-morning, Pat. I heard your little ones were sick, and my wife
thought your wife would have her hands full, and she has sent a few
little things--not much, but they will help a little, I hope."
The tears are in Pat's eyes. "Come in, Elder, if you are not afraid,
for we have scarlet fever here."
"That is the very reason I came, my boy;" and Pat is won. The very man
that swore the hardest because the elder was near, now says, "Don't
swear, boys; there's the elder."
Yes; and when men have heard that the new preacher has helped in the
house stricken with small-pox or typhoid, he has the freedom of the
village, or the camp, and is respected. And so the village missionary
does some good in the mill-town. But what is one man among so many?
See this little place with less than five hundred population. Two
thousand men come there for their mail, and the average distance to
the next church is over twenty miles; and one man is totally
inadequate to the great work before him.
These villages and camps ought to have good libraries, a hall well
lighted, innocent amusements, lectures, and entertainments, and in
addition to this, an army of men carrying good books and visiting all
the camps; and there is nothing to hinder but the lack of money, and
the lack of will to use it in those who have abundance. I lately
passed through a lumber-town of seven thousand inhabitants. Four or
five millionnaires lived there. One had put up an $80,000
training-school, another a memorial building costing $160,000. This
is the other extreme. But up to date the lumber-regions have been
shamefully neglected, and thousands of boys and girls are growing up
to drift to our great cities and form the dangerous classes, fitted
for it by their training. It is better to clear the water-sheds than
to buy filters, and the cheapest policeman of the city is the
missionary in the waste places of our land.
XXVI.
TWO KINDS OF FRONTIER.
Some years ago it is said that a man lost his pig, and in searching
for it he found it by hearing its squealing. The pig had fallen in a
hole; and in getting it out, the man saw the rich copper ore which led
to the opening of the Calumet and Hecla mines, and more recently the
Tamarack. More ore per ton goes into the lake from the washing than
comes out of most mines. So rich is this ore that very few fine
mineral specimens are found in the mines. Millions of money have been
expended in developing them, and millions more have come out of them.
With such richness one would expect to find the usual deviltry that
abounds in mining regions; but such is not the case. In the early
days, the mines were worked on Sunday in the Keweenaw region; but
through the resolute stand of two Scotchmen, who would not work on
Sunday, the work was stopped on Saturday night at twelve o'clock, and
resumed again Monday at twelve A.M. And this was found to be a benefit
all round, as it generally is. I knew of a salt-well where the man
thought it must be kept going all the time; but one Sunday he let it
rest, and found that, instead of coming up in little spits, it
accumulated, so that, as he said, it came "ker-plump, ker-plump."
When the little church was first started in Calumet, the projectors of
it were asked how much money they would want from the society to help
them. The answer was, a check for two hundred dollars for home
missions. Knowing this, I was not surprised to find good churches,
good schools, good society, a good hotel, and as good morals as you
can find anywhere. Not a drop of liquor is sold in Calumet. This shows
what may be done by starting right; and there is no occasion for a
mining-camp to be any worse except through criminal neglect of the
owners.
We pass on to the new mines farther west, and what do we find? Saloons
packed twenty in a block, dance-houses with the most degrading
attachments, scores of young lives sacrificed to man's lust, the
streets dangerous after dark, and not pleasant to be on at any time.
The local newspaper thus heralded a dog-fight at the theatre, "As both
dogs are in good condition, it will prove one of the most interesting
fights ever seen on this range."
Here is the copy of an advertisement: "At the Alhambra Theatre.
Prize-fight, thirty rounds or more. Prize, $200,00. Don't mistake this
for a hippodrome. Men in fine condition. Plucky. Usual price."
Here is another: "Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, balloon ascension. A
lady from the East will go up hanging by her toes. At a great height
she will drop deeds of lots, the lucky possessor only to write his or
her name to own the lot. Persons coming from a distance, and buying
lots, will have railroad money refunded. Men leaving work, and buying,
their wages paid. Everybody come and have a good time. Remember the
date's Saturday, Sunday, and Monday."
Here pandemonium reigned. What a place to raise a family! Thousands of
little children were growing up under these awful conditions. I have
gone up the lake more than once when innocent young girls were on the
boat, expecting to find places at the hotel, only to meet with
temptation and ruin; some committing suicide, some becoming more
reckless than the brutes that duped them.
The harbor could be reached only by daylight, and with vessels of
light draft; and no sooner were they unloaded than they steamed off
again, not to return for a week. Thus there was no way for these
unfortunate girls to get back if they wished, for it was a dense
forest for thirty miles to the nearest railway point, in the
meanwhile, worse than death came to those who fell into the clutches
of such fiends in human shape.
One man, the chief owner there, threatened the bold rascals; but they
said they would build their house upon a raft and defy him. He said,
"I will cut you loose." They snapped their fingers at him, burnt his
hotel, and shot him. Did this go on in the dark? No; the Chicago and
Minneapolis and St. Paul's newspapers wrote it up. I spoke of it until
warned I must not tell such awful things: it would be too shocking.
Into such awful places our minute-man goes, and takes his family too.
It is hard work at first, but little by little sin must give way
before righteousness. It is strange that Christian men and women can
draw incomes from these mines, and feel no duty towards the poor men
who work for them. I met one such man upon the steamer coming from
Europe. He had been over twice that season. He had made his
thousands, and was going back with his family to travel in Egypt, and
leave his children with their nurses at Cairo.
He admitted everything I told him about the condition of things on his
own property; and in answer as to whether he would help, said, "No;
it's none of my funeral." How any man could walk those streets, and
see fair young girls drunk at nine A.M., and in company with some of
the worst characters that ever disgraced humanity, and not feel his
obligations to his Lord and fellow-man, is more than I can understand.
The awful cheapness of human life, the grim jokes upon the most solemn
things, could only be matched in the French Revolution. I saw in one
store, devoted to furniture and picture-frames, a deep frame with a
glass front, and inside a knotted rope, and written underneath,
"Deputy-sheriff's necktie, worn by ---- for murdering Mollie ----" on
such a date. This was for the sheriff's parlor.
Hard times have made a great change since I walked those streets. The
roar of traffic has given place to the howl of hungry wolves that have
prowled among the deserted shanties in midday in search of food; and
the State has had to supply food and clothing to the poor, while my
man, who had made his thousands, was studying the cuneiform
inscription, in Egypt. It ought to make him think, when he sees the
mummies of dead kings being shipped to England to raise turnips, that
some day he will have a funeral all his own.
[Illustration: BREAKING NEW GROUND.
_Page 262._]
XXVII.
BREAKING NEW GROUND.
_"This is the forest primeval."_
A grand sight is the forest primeval when the birds fill all its
arches with song, or we sweep through them to the music of
sleigh-bells. A pleasant sight is the farmer, surrounded by his wife
and children, with well-kept farm, ample barns, and well-fed stock.
But what wild desolation once reigned where now these fine farms are
seen! The great trees stretched on for hundreds of miles. The hardy
settler came with axe and saw and slow-paced oxen, cleared a little
space, and built a log hut. For a little time all goes well; then
thistles, burdocks, mulleins, and briers come to pester him and
increase his labors. Between the blackened log-heaps fire-weeds spring
up. The man and his wife grow old fast. Ague shakes their
confidence as well as their bodies. Schools are few, the roads mere
trails.