About the year 1889 when I was seventeen years old I commenced on the lowest rung on the railroad ladder and went to work on the section. I was frail physically, and must have been the same mentally, for I never got beyond the third rung. I worked in the days when you spoke for the spring job the preceding fall, and then often your application met failure. In hard times when jobs are few the fellow that has them is blessed with unusual longevity, and whenever some one did pass beyond, his demise was railroad talk for a long time.

When you consider that all through the central west, which had a few years earlier been homesteaded after several repeated crop failures, almost the entire population were looking for employment and the only cash job in the country was a section job, you can realize how desirable and prized a position it was.

I don’t remember how it came that my application was slumbering all through the cold winter with a large number of those half-starved homesteaders who hadn’t raised anything for so many years, received recognition in the spring; but it did and I got one of the plums.

The first time I pumped a hand-car I fully realized the Lord had made no mistake by taking out one of the ribs and leaving the backbone whole. If you ever pumped a hand-car I will pass from this painful mode of travel and let you refresh your own memory and backache.

I got along pretty well, when the “Boss” wasn’t nervous that the road master would come along and want to borrow another fifty dollars on his word without interest, everything went nicely. When weed cutting time, came I gritted my teeth, held my back as straight as I could and whacked away. Besides the excruciating pain in the back that made you feel like you would like to give one long piercing yell, throw your shovel away and run for town, there was the additional pain of seeing the “Boss” sitting on the hand car resting his back. He had the advantage and the authority! I must keep at it and cut the weeds or the wheels of the locomotive would slip, the traveler couldn’t resume his journey, all traffic would stop, and down would go the railroad stock and let out all the water.

It would have been a blessing if the water could have been spilled by some patent process where the weeds were to be cut, but, monopolies monopolize and if the Lord didn’t see fit to have the rain fall in September instead of June no one was to blame, except Grover Cleveland. The Republicans said the country always went to the dogs and dried up when the Democrats elected a President. I was too young then to know much about statesmanship and I wouldn’t want to say for repetition whether or not the Lord and Cleveland were working together or otherwise, but I do remember some one was mighty stingy with the moisture.

If you, my dear reader, have never had the privilege of cutting weeds for a dollar and thirty-five cents per day for three weeks in succession then, for all that’s good and beautiful, take my advice and let the Jap, Greek, or Italian have your place and do the mowing. Either of them can get better wages and any of these dark-skinned brethren will do as much in three days as the white man would in one day and cause the pale face no extra exertion.

The pain in the back caused from close association with a shovel from seven o’clock to twelve o’clock and from one o’clock to six even now, over twenty years afterwards, almost makes me break down and give vent to my feelings in a more noticeable manner than my friend Taft when he was informed that he had carried Utah. If you have ever been tortured with lumbago, you have a slight knowledge of what races up and down the back of a weed cutter. When he bends down he can’t get up and when he gets up he can’t get down. There you are! Humiliated, suffering and mad, knife blade sticking you whenever you move, but you must or bust. You are a free born American citizen but you must lose sight of the special endowment when you are cutting weeds. The constitution may be back of you, but just at present you have got to get back of your own constitution and a “darn” good one too, or you’ve lost your job and that dearly beloved stipend of thirteen and one-half cents an hour.

Being on the low rung of the railroad ladder is the same as in all other departments, the man at the bottom gets the low wages, needs the good back and carries the heavy burden. He don’t need much brain; he is told what to do; how to do it and when. He’s told when to go to work and when to quit. Brains would be a nuisance and, if he had any, he wouldn’t be working on the section. Time has proved that, and the Dago takes his place.

What became of the Irish, Swede, German and Bohemian section men of twenty-five years ago is more than I know. Extempore, an increase of brains did something for him and you don’t find him tramping ties with the Dago. But the man at the low rung hasn’t much choice; he can work or quit. His job is always in jeopardy as he couldn’t save enough in a year to loan out an occasional “fifty” to smooth the feelings of an over auspicious road-master. He’s at the bottom and whatever falls goes down to him and in an undignified way he must carry the whole load, for it can not go lower. The general manager can ease his feelings on the superintendent, and he on the road-master and the road-master can growl at the section foreman, but when the section foreman dumps the whole putrid, half-boiled mess on the unlearned day laborer you can see the urgent necessity of a fine piece of choice workmanship in the middle of the back. You seldom see a man with a front like a wash-tub turned edgewise working on the railroad. There is no room for him! You must be able to see your feet if you cut weeds, and have a stomach that can say “Hello” to the backbone at nine fifteen A. M.

When the winds used to tear loose from the nasty bad lands of South Dakota and come tearing over the semi-arid plains for three days in succession at a velocity of sixty miles an hour it seems the Lord could have improved on man by giving him a gizzard to grind up the accumulated gravel that had been beaten into his daily bread. It came pretty near taking the hide off from me to keep pace with those hungry homesteaders who were afraid of losing their jobs and existence.

I am glad that I had the backbone. The term is applicable in two ways. One is the acquisition of a resilient mechanism in the center of your back, starting at the base of your brain and running down to a certain point or as far as is necessary, and the other is a priceless stamina, determination and a square deal. I am not sorry that I acquired some on the railroad; its a good thing to have in the every day affairs of life.

I hardened my backbone when I worked on the steel gang a few years afterwards, and, if there is such a thing as a steel backbone, I claim some right to its possession through low remuneration and dirty cabbage. Keen retrenchment policies make better satisfied stockholders and also make wages that would embarrass a bumble bee if he were buying a pair of leggings and expected to pay for them.

It takes unlimited backbone for a congressman to vote “Yes” on the prohibition amendment and turn down the easy money of the brewers. It takes backbone for a president to cast custom aside and step into the halls of congress and demand that the party pledges be kept. It takes a better backbone to enter the same halls and take a determined stand on a cause that means better citizenship. It takes backbone if the minister ousts the liberal paying hypocrite who is helping to kill the church with his pocketbook.

It takes backbone every day you live and if you don’t use it in the way it was intended you can’t tread the narrow path and expect to slip into heaven without being recognized. You may do it on earth but you must not try it where you are known. It takes backbone to be a Christian, the earnest conscientious kind, that can lay all jealousy aside, all prejudice and hatred and give the offender a square Christian deal. Unless you can do these things you CAN’T be a Christian, the kind that Jesus told us to be. The other kind is a sham and an out-and-out sinner is far better. True Christianity will not allow one individual to do another of the slightest wrong. The conscience of a real Christian will not allow any ill feeling or the harboring of malice. You know it’s wrong, your conscience reminds you of the wrong and unless you remove that kind of Christianity you can never receive the fruits that come from the narrow way and be a successful Christian. You know yourself if you are a sham so why try to fool anybody and carry a false label.