"trouble," the less subtle disappointments of life, those which come
with disease, injury and premature death. Of all these rougher blows
of fortune, the poor family gets more than an even share. This stands
to reason, if experience has not already convinced one of it. To the
ordinary causes of sickness,--unsanitary dwellings, overcrowding, undue
exposure, overwork, lack of necessary vacation, work under poisonous
conditions,--to all these poor people are much more constantly exposed
than others. To injury and death caused by accident they are also more
exposed. Poor people's children play in dangerous places, on the street,
near railroad tracks. The poor man's dwelling is not often fire-proof.
Poor people do most of the hazardous work in the world, and the
accidents connected with work form the majority of all accidents.
Moreover, the poor family is, in a material way, less able to meet these
disasters when they come, than the well-to-do family. This is in some
degree due to ignorance, for ignorance, whether as cause or result,
almost always goes with poverty. In a very large degree, however, it
is due to poverty itself. It is because they have no reserve fund to
fall back on in emergencies. Suppose a young steel worker with a family
gets a long, sharp chip of steel in his eye. He cannot go to the best
specialist, to the man who knows all that anybody knows about saving
eyes. Through ignorance or lack of interest on the part of the doctor
who treats him, he loses his eye. Thus an injury which might mean but a
few weeks of fearful anxiety to a well-to-do man, may result in lasting
misery to a poor man. In the same way, too, what might often be in a
well-to-do family a short struggle with disease, crowned with success,
is more likely to be in a poor family an unrelieved tragedy.
Thus are the poor, by reason of their very poverty, not only more open
to attack from these bodily foes, but also, and again by reason of their
poverty, less equipped to fight and conquer them. "St. George killed the
dragon; St. George wore the finest armor of his day and his sword was
tested steel."
With these workers whom I met,--poor people, not as the charity
visitor knows them, but poor, as the rank and file of wage earners are
poor,--misfortune is almost part of the regular course of things. They
are used to hard knocks, if not yet in their own lives, then in the
lives of their relatives, friends, and neighbors. Consequently, there
is often in their attitude toward trouble a certain matter-of-fact
calmness, which looks like indifference. Thus, I have had a mother tell
me about her sixteen-year-old son's losing two fingers in the mill. She
couldn't remember exactly how or when it happened; she thought he had
lost only a week's work; and she had no comment upon it but that it
might have been worse. An old steel worker whom I questioned about his
injuries answered, "I never got hurt any to speak of." After persistent
inquiry, however, he recalled that he had once fractured his skull, that
a few years later he had lost half of a finger, and that only three
years ago he was laid up for nine weeks with a crushed foot. Troubles
like these are the common lot; they are not treasured up and remembered
against fate.
Often I have found in young women a surprisingly "middle-aged" way
of looking at trouble. I remember, for instance, Mrs. Coleman, whose
husband was a freight conductor. They had been married nine years,
and had made out pretty well up to the last two years, although the
wife, as she somewhat proudly explained, had had three children,
two miscarriages, and an operation, during this time. On Christmas
night, 1903, Coleman had his arm crushed in a railroad accident. He
was disabled for three months, and went back to work with a partially
crippled arm. Three weeks later, as he was numbering cars, an iron bar
rolled off the load and broke his nose. This laid him up again for five
weeks, and left his face permanently disfigured. He has been troubled
ever since with nose-bleeding, so that he has to lay off every little
while, and the doctor says he must have an operation before he can be
cured. Since this second injury, a fourth child has come. When I saw
her, Mrs. Coleman was just recovering from a bad attack of grip, which
had increased their expenses. To help along in this hard luck time they
took two railroad men to lodge and board in their three room flat; one
of these men had been killed on the road the week before I called. Here
are troubles enough, and yet this young woman had no special complaint
against fortune.
"Yes," she said, as she rose to open the door for me, the last baby
dangling over one arm,--"we've had a bad time these last two years, and
now with him only working two or three days a week, I guess it'll be
worse. But then,"--with a smile, "what can you do about it?"
On the same day I talked with a much older woman. She was too worn out
to smile at her troubles, but she had the same "everyday" attitude
toward them. Ten months ago they had been doing well. Her husband was
earning ten dollars a week at odd jobs; two sons, twenty and seventeen,
were getting fifteen dollars a week each as lead buffers in a coffin
works; she and her daughter kept house and did a little sewing; and they
all lived happily together. Then one day her husband was brought home
with a smashed foot and a leg broken in two places, as a result of a bad
fall. He had been on a ladder, painting, when the cornice gave way and
he jumped to save himself. For five months they kept him at the hospital
free of charge, and for four months more he went back on crutches for
treatment. Finally they told him to come back for an operation, but on
the day after the operation they sent him away again with a bill of
three dollars for the time he had been there. His wife had to help him
home, and he was in bed when I called. The doctor had said it would be
better for him to stay at the hospital, but the superintendent decided
that they could not treat him in the ward for nothing any longer. The
wife laughed a little grimly when she told me this.
"Why," she said, "I can't pay a dollar and a half a day to that
hospital. Ever since he got hurt I've been cleaning offices. All I can
make is six dollars a week and I have to pay car fares out of that."
"Well," I said, "how about your sons? They are making good wages."
"Oh, they were," she answered, "but Harry, the oldest one, has been home
for five months. He's got gastritis, and the doctor says it's from lead
poisoning. You know he's a lead buffer on coffins. He don't seem to get
much better."
"And the other boy," I said, "does he go right on doing the same work?"
"Yes, Charlie,--I don't know what we'd do if he lost his job. He's been
on half time now for three months, and that means only $7.50 a week."
To add to the general desolation in this home, the flood had been in and
covered the lower floor, leaving everything smeared with a dry, muddy
paste. In the midst of it all sat this tired woman of fifty, who had
just come home from her five early morning hours of office scrubbing;
and she was less concerned with the bitterness of her struggle with life
than she was with the immediate problem of how to get her maimed old man
up to the hospital every other day for treatment.
This unquestioning acceptance of misfortune does not often amount to
either a commendable cheerfulness or a deplorable apathy. Occasionally,
however, it approaches heroism. I think the most courageous person I met
during the year was Mrs. Herman Baum, a German woman of forty-five or
thereabouts, who, after nine years of disappointment and defeat, still
meets the days as they come with an unbroken spirit. She came to America
as a girl of nineteen and went out to service. At twenty-three she
married. Her "man" turned out ugly; he drank and was always mean to her.
His parents, who thought he had married beneath him, took a dislike to
her and joined him in making her unhappy. They lived along in this way
for fifteen years, during which time she bore him seven children. One
day, in his work as a moulder, he received a slight injury, from which
blood poisoning set in. After this his mind was affected; he became
silent, morose, and uglier than ever, giving his wife hardly a moment,
day or night, when she was not in fear of him. After a year or so
during which he grew steadily worse, he shot himself one night, leaving
her with the seven children, another one coming, and no resources except
a heavily mortgaged house and $800 insurance. She had no relatives; her
father had been run over by a train, soon after coming to America, and
her only brother had been drowned in river work a few years before.
It was in August, 1906, that Mrs. Baum's husband killed himself. In
September a baby was born, only to die before winter. The two older
children got work and brought in ten dollars a week between them, while
Mrs. Baum took in washing and made two or three dollars a week. Thus
things went pretty well until June, 1907, when the second boy, Harry,
the jolly one, who "kept all their spirits up with his jokes," was all
but killed in an elevator accident at the box factory where he worked.
When, after four months at the hospital, he came home with a permanent
lameness, and strict orders never again to do heavy work, he turned
to selling papers, and is now making about $1.40 a week. After half
their small income was cut off by this accident, Mrs. Baum tried to
run a grocery store in the front part of her house, but she lost money
at it and was forced to give it up. When I saw her, she was hanging
somebody's washing up in the yard. She took me into her spotless kitchen
and told me this story, not eagerly, as if pouring out her troubles,
but only after many questions, rather reluctantly, and with sometimes
an apologetic smile. Here, I thought, is a heroine of modern realistic
tragedy; the dramatist would have her lost in bitter retrospect. But she
was not; she sat there smiling a bit ruefully, and wondered whether she
must put aside her sturdy German pride next week, and go to the Poor
Board for help.
Some people, especially the Irish, even get amusement out of the number
and variety of their troubles. This is true of the Learys, whose six
years of married life have been crowded with disasters. To begin with,
Andy, the husband, who is a brakeman, has had nine accidents on the
road in five years, so many that his wife could not distinguish in her
memory the one of a year ago which I had come to inquire about. Twice
he has been near death. Once the priest performed the last offices, but
Andy pulled through after all. Besides all these injuries, none of them
less severe than a broken bone, he accidentally shot himself one day and
nearly died from that. "And look at him now!" said Mrs. Leary. (Andy
is a handsome Irishman, and the picture of health.) In addition to all
this, they have lost two children by diphtheria. Mrs. Leary's outlook
on life seems to be a mingling of humor and superstition. She told me,
with incongruous awesomeness in her Irish brogue, how she had heard
the "death whistle" outside the door three times on the night that her
little boy died. And one night, when Andy had to stay at home to take
care of her, the brakeman sent in his place was killed. She thinks this
is a "sign," and has no doubt of Andy's ultimate fate.
"Oh yis," said she, "the docthers say ye can't kill Andy,--but I know
betther. He'll be a-comin' home dead soon. Ivery time I hear a knock at
the dhoor, I thinks to mesilf, 'There now,--it's thim, comin' to tell
me Andy's kil't.' Andy, he jokes about it. Ony this marnin' afther I'd
been givin' him his breakfast, he starts to go to work out the back
dhoor, an' I says, 'Andy, why don't you niver go out the front dhoor?'
'Oh, Leary;' says he,--(that's what he calls me--Leary) 'Leary,' says
he, 'the back dhoor's good enough for me. I'll be a-comin' by the front
dhoor soon enough, an' I won't be walkin'."
With so many misfortunes the Learys have not been able to save anything.
Four times Andy tried to join the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen,
but each time after his papers were made out and he had paid down his
dollar, and the day had come to join, he couldn't get together the
necessary nine dollars for the first payment. With all this, there
is an unfailing humor and philosophy in the Leary household which is
irresistible.
Among railroad men generally there is a certain laughing, soldier
spirit. It is part of the faith; no true "railroader" is without it.
Perhaps this spirit leans to recklessness with some of the younger
ones, but I believe it is just as essential to the running of a railroad
as is the executive skill of the Hills and Harrimans. This spirit stands
by the men in danger and makes them meet death bravely. It stands often
a harder test; you will not break the spirit of a railroader by cutting
off his arm or giving him a wooden leg. Out of fifteen railroad men I
visited, who had received permanent injuries, all but four have gone
back to the road. Two of the four are totally unable to do work of any
kind. Another has gone home for a few weeks until he can "get used
to his wooden leg," when he will be ready for any job the road will
give him. The other, a twenty-year-old boy who lost his right arm at
the shoulder, has learned to write with his left hand and is studying
telegraphy as hard as he can, in order to stick by the railroad.
Of the eleven who are back on the road, nine were able to go into the
same work and pay, but two had to take lower jobs on account of partial
disability. This meant in each case five or six dollars a week less, but
neither man complained; he took it as part of the day's work. What the
railroader dreads is having to quit the road altogether. A watchman's
job will be accepted with a good deal of cheer. Notice the spirit of
the one-legged watchman at your crossing, who is very likely a man
dropped from an active, exciting occupation at eighty dollars a month
to flagging a crossing for forty. He is still in the game. But try to
retire a railroader on a pension while he is able to work, and you will
break his heart.
To a large extent, the railroaders' wives reflect this spirit. They are
quite resigned to the risks and dangers of the "mister's" trade. But
with the mothers, especially those whose husbands have followed more
quiet callings, it is different. They lead an anxious life.
In every dangerous occupation there is not this sustaining common
courage to help a man endure gaily a lifelong deprivation. A certain
degree of independence and fraternity in a group is necessary to bring
it about. Many go forth from the steel mills maimed for life, who have
no such spirit to uphold them. I remember one night in Homestead seeing
a boy on crutches, with one leg gone. He was about nineteen, with blue
eyes and a shock of yellow hair falling down low on his forehead. In
his face was that desperate look of defiance which comes with a recent
deformity. He was trying with all his young will to be indifferent to
the stares of the crowd, while in every nerve he felt them. All this and
a weary hopelessness were written in his sullen child-face.
I have shown how grief is crowded out of the lives of working people,
and how their frequent experience of trouble gives them an ordinary
manner in speaking of it. These things largely account for the opinion
held by many, that working people do not feel their sorrows as keenly as
others do.
Furthermore, I found among working people almost no pretence of feeling
where none exists. This too, might give rise to such an opinion. Where
the death of a husband has meant merely a loss of income, with the
attending problems of struggle and adjustment, there is no effort
to have it appear otherwise. Where it has aroused only a feeling of
bitterness toward the employer, this is not concealed either. But
where the death of the bread-winner, has meant not merely an economic
problem, not merely a legal battle, but heartache and emptiness,--that
is written, real and unmistakable, in the faces of those left. And in
the case of sons, where there may be no question of income, it is often
possible to tell in the first glance at the mother whether this boy who
was killed was "one of her children," or the child of her heart. There
is an outspoken genuineness about these people which allows them neither
to make a show of grief where there is none, nor to hide real suffering,
even from a stranger.
Mrs. Leary took the accidents of "Andy" lightly. If he should happen to
be killed some day her heart would not be broken. She spoke of the death
of her baby three months before without feeling, mentioning the doctor's
bills. But when I asked her to tell me about her oldest boy who died
two years ago of diphtheria, I could see at once that I was on different
ground. Her eyes filled with tears, and there was grief and longing in
her voice as she talked about him. You see he was only five, but they
understood each other. When she was unhappy he knew it. He would climb
up in her lap, she said, and put his arms around her neck and say,
"Don't cry, Mommy; I love you."
Mrs. Burns, a pretty Irish widow, whose husband was crushed while
coupling cars, is obviously well satisfied with the $4,000 insurance he
left. She takes boarders and is carefully saving the insurance money for
her little girl's education. Her affections are set on this child. She
has a tender memory of her Tom as he started off to work whistling that
last morning, but she makes no pretence to mourn for him. She frankly
admits that her marriage was not successful enough to make her risk it
again.
Thus it is with Mrs. Andrews, a woman whose husband was killed in the
mill. I found her smiling and contented a year later. Her man had been
good and faithful while he lived, but after he died, her brother came to
live with her and help her raise her two boys. He earned just as much,
and she was perfectly satisfied with the situation.
On the other hand, I knew of a six months' bride who shot herself three
weeks after her husband was killed. And a young German woman, whose
father had been run over by a dinky engine in the mill, said to me in a
choking voice, "Oh, when it comes to tellin' how he died, it breaks my
heart." I have seen mothers and fathers in middle life who had become
broken and old in a year after the death of a son, and a few women whom
I visited eighteen months after such a tragedy, were literally unable to
speak of it.
There was one wild-eyed little Scotch woman, Mrs. MacGregor, who refused
to talk with me at all. I learned from a neighbor that she had twice
been insane. Some years ago, when they had lived near the railroad, a
little three-year-old girl of hers, who was playing before the house,
ran in front of a train. The mother reached the child just in time to
touch her dress as the engine tore her away. The mother lost her reason
and was sent to an asylum. After six or eight months she recovered and
came home. Then, one morning two years later, she got word to come at
once to the hospital, that her son was dying. He was a lineman at Edgar
Thompson, and had left home to go to work as usual two hours before. In
some way,--no one ever knew how,--he had fallen from a ladder and broken
his skull. After this second blow the mother was again insane.
Then there was an old father, Macdougal, who had had three sons. One
died of smallpox, and one was killed in a steel mill. The third was a
railroad engineer. On the night of March 13, 1907, he was taking a heavy
freight across a bridge at Deer Creek, Harmarsville. The creek was high
and the pier gave way; the engine and first cars went crashing into the
water below, carrying three men to death. The bodies of the fireman and
conductor were recovered next day, but young Macdougal, the engineer,
was never found. They say the old man's hair turned white in twenty-four
hours, and that he can still be found on fair days walking along the
banks of the creek, looking for his son. But for the most part mothers
and fathers do not lose their hold on things. Their lives go on as
before. You can know perhaps only from a weary sadness in the mother's
eyes that the light of their lives has gone out.
Death does not always mean sorrow, and these working people, it seems to
me, feel no pressure of convention upon them to appear sorrowful when
they are not. But where affection is strong and love is deep, tragedies
are as real with them as with any people I have known.
Wherever love is found there is the chance of grief; there is potential
tragedy. And it is in poor families, I think, that one finds the most
close and lasting affection.
So often, in looking up a fatal accident case, I would come upon
an intimate and devoted family group. The case of Will Gordon, for
instance,--there was a holiday drama I shall not soon forget. The
Gordon family was a large one. Father and mother were living, and three
working sons lived at home, besides four younger children. Then there
were two married daughters, who lived near by and kept in close touch
with the family. Will, the oldest son, although he was twenty-eight, was
the greatest "home boy" of them all. He still handed every pay envelope
over to his mother, unopened, as he had done when a child. His working
life had been varied. First he tried the railroad, but he was slight,
and the work was too much for him. Then for a while he did river work
with one of his younger brothers who was on a government job. But in
this he soon developed a chronic cough, and his mother was afraid of
consumption. So finally he got a job with the Pressed Steel Car Company,
as a pipe fitter's helper. Here the work was lighter and seemed to agree
with him. Every two weeks he brought home twenty-five dollars and handed
it over to his mother. Meanwhile his father, who was fifty, had taken a
job at the Oil Refinery, firing boilers at night.
The boys considered this a dangerous job for the old man, and almost
every night one of them would go with him. Will felt most strongly
about it and was always begging his father to give it up. On Christmas
evening, 1906, the son's arguments prevailed and his father promised
to give up the job. This made them all especially happy on the next
day, when the two married daughters came home with their families to
celebrate Christmas. During the day they planned that the whole family
should gather at the oldest daughter's house for New Year's. All the
boys were to have a holiday except Will, and he promised to get off at
noon, if he could, to eat the New Year's dinner with them. The day came,
the family was gathered and the dinner was ready. With much joking and
laughter and good-humored impatience, they were waiting for Will. In
the midst of it came a boy with a scared face to say that Will had been
killed at the works. He had been sent to repair a leak in a pipe. The
steam was left on; the pipe burst; and he and Wilson, the pipe fitter,
were scalded to death. The father put on his coat and hurried down to
the mill to keep them from sending his boy's body to the morgue.
This family affection shows its true nature in times of trouble.
Barring what seemed to me an unusual number of deserting husbands, I
was impressed with the faithfulness of these people to one another
in struggle and distress. There was Mrs. Frederick, for instance, a
Swiss woman whose husband was killed in a runaway, while driving for a
wholesale liquor dealer. Just a week before the accident they had bought
a small house with a $600 mortgage on it, and Mr. Frederick said to
his wife, as they were looking over the deed: "Now we can begin to get
along, and lift up our heads, and stop worrying."
Since her husband's death, even with the $1,000 insurance, it has been
hard to keep things going and continue payments on the house. There are
four children and only one is old enough to work. Just in this troublous
time, too, the family burdens have increased. Mrs. Frederick's mother
has come from Switzerland, old, feeble and without income; and her
step-daughter, who had been away from home and independent for years,
after lying in a hospital six weeks with a fever, has now come home,
weak and helpless, to stay until she is able to work. Mrs. Frederick
does not for a moment question the rightfulness of these burdens. The
old grandmother and the convalescent daughter help her around the house;
she takes in washing; the boy's wages are good. On the whole she is
cheerful. The last thing she said to me, as she stood in the open door,
was, "Oh, we'll get on somehow. We'll all work together, and if we have
to, we'll starve together."