THE great city had not been kind to them. For three weeks they had been beaten back and forth all the length and breadth of its hot and inhospitable streets until their little money and their courage were exhausted, and they had drifted back to the Battery, the place nearest home which they could reach “without money and without price.”

They had come here for work and had sought it from shop to shop, wherever men with a fair share of muscle were wanted; but they always found that some stronger man had come before them so they were left, like the sick man at the Pool of Bethesda, unhealed at the edge of the water.

They had been my travelling companions across the sea, and I felt some responsibility for them, besides being anxious to know what becomes of men in America who have neither our speech which might be silver, nor the silent gold which serves as power. So I cast my lot and my small change among them. We travelled as far as a five cent fare would take us and began looking for work among the large mansions and fancy farms which line the shore of Long Island Sound. Barking dogs, frightened house maids and discourteous lackeys we found everywhere, but neither work nor food for the four of us. We did not look like tramps, although our clothes were shabby and the dust and grime of the city did not tend to improve our appearance; yet we spent a whole day looking unsuccessfully for work, and when night came upon us nothing remained but to return to the city, as bankrupt in our stock of courage as in our finances.

That blessed and famous bread line, where the Lord answers His poor people’s prayer for daily bread, kept us from starving, and there was enough free ice water to be had to wash down the bread and benumb our digestive organs into silence.

Union and Madison square park benches were our beds a few minutes at a time, for the watchful policeman kept us moving as if we were drunk from laudanum. We went the length of lower Broadway, to City Hall park, and finally to the Battery where the next morning’s gray found us, wearier and shabbier than ever. Twenty-four such hours as we lived were enough to push us down the social scale to the level of the tramp, and we were greeted as such by those birds of passage, one of whom proved to be a “friend in need.” He really pitied my speechless companions and after sharing with us his begged buns, he told us of the New Jersey paradise where orchards and truck gardens were waiting for the toil of our hands.

He promised to accompany us, and was generous enough to offer to pay our way across the river. He seemed to enjoy the task of leadership and unfolded his great plans for us as he led us along the railroad track by the salt marshes of New Jersey, where we nearly perished from the attacks of mosquitoes. The New Jersey mosquito is enough of a factor to prevent the distribution of the immigrant. I certainly should not blame any one who preferred the stenches of Rivington Street to the sting of the mosquitoes on the New Jersey marshes. Nowhere was work given us, although we were treated less rudely, and in a few cases were offered food in exchange for a few chores; our travelled friend diligently instructing us to do as little as possible in return for the kind of food which we generally received. The day’s earning of food included: smoked sturgeon, which was wormy, and ham bones to which clung a minimum of meat and a maximum of tough skin. On the whole, we were soon made to realize that the New Jersey farmer knew how to drive a good bargain, in connection with what he was pleased to consider his charities.

When night came, our friend suggested an empty freight car as our lodging place, and in lieu of a better one, we went to sleep for the first time in this country, where the bed cost us nothing, and where some one’s else property became temporarily our own. We slept, in spite of the soreness of our muscles and the continued attacks of mosquitoes, and when we awoke it was still dark; at least in the car, into which neither starlight nor sunshine could penetrate,—for we were locked in, our guide and guardian gone, and with him three watches, four coats and our shoes.

After a long, long time, in answer to our cries, a railroad man opened the car and found us more destitute than we had yet been, and in need of a better friend(?) than the one we had lost. I told him our story, and he directed us to a farmer on the Trenton road who always needed labourers, and who he was quite sure would take us in, notwithstanding our denuded condition.

Barefoot and coatless we reached the farm which we recognized by the fact that a sign was tacked to the gate post, stating in four languages that “Labourers are wanted within.” In the rear of the house we were received by a be-aproned gentleman who proved to be the cook and housekeeper of this strange establishment. After I had told him the story of our adventures, we were invited to breakfast to which we did ample justice, in spite of the fact that it was prepared by a man who evidently knew little or nothing about the art of cooking. He told me that he too, had drifted from the great city, an immigrant who had found no standing room in the crowded shops. He told me also that every man at work here was a “Green-horn,” as he expressed it, and that not one of them had been longer than six months away from the Old Country.

At last the “Boss” came from the field; a rather portly man, red faced, hard headed and with small, beady eyes. He made a poor impression upon me, especially when he began to speak German, a language which he had acquired to be able to deal with his help. He offered us the hospitality of his farm and $10.00 a month, beside which he was ready to advance us the necessary farm clothing which he kept in stock for such emergencies. The clothing consisted of overalls, jacket, a straw hat and very coarse shoes.

We were not told what he charged us for them, but I began to suspect the man when that evening he drove me to the village to buy a pair of shoes, none of those in his stock fitting me.

When we reached the store, he told the proprietor in English which I was not supposed to understand, to tell me that the shoes were hand made and cost $3.50. They were common, roughly made shoes which could be bought in any store for $1.25 and I have no doubt that the profit was to be divided between these gentlemen.

At night in the loft of the barn, a dozen men, representing about ten nationalities met, and after looking at one another in stolid silence for a time, went to sleep. In the morning we were initiated into our task, which consisted of the customary chores, and finally, the field work in the patches of garden stuff, where hoeing and pulling weeds were the order of the twelve hours labour, with the beady eyes of the “Boss” ever upon us. He grew more and more impatient with our unskillful ways, and swore loudly in English and German, terrifying my Slavic friends beyond my ability to calm them.

Each day was the same as the one just past; hard work in the field, poor food in the kitchen, a hay bed at night, and the impatience of the “Boss” manifesting itself in personal violence against those of us who were the weaker among his slaves. Each day one or the other man disappeared, some of them leaving behind the little bundle of clothing bought from the farmer. This he immediately appropriated and sold to the next comer; for one or more new men of the same type were sure to drift in, to begin the labour which brought no wages.

According to the cook, the four of us broke the record, having stayed nearly a month. About two days before pay day I came in at evening with a broken cultivator. Whether running it into a tree stump had wrecked it, or whether it had been ready to fall to pieces at the slightest provocation I do not know; but the “Boss” grew violent in his anger and attacked me with a pitchfork, driving me out of the very gate through which I had come twenty-nine days before.

I went to the village and after finding a justice of the peace, laid before him my complaint, but he discouraged any legal action on my part because I did not have money enough to back it. When night came, I returned to the farm and calling out my men, who were only too ready to follow, we cut through a tall corn-field, and climbing a wire fence were again on the Trenton road. We walked the whole night, into Trenton and out of it, and far on our way to Pennsylvania. The next day we found that our labour was indeed wanted, and a few weeks in the tobacco fields of a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer put money into our purses and flesh upon our muscle. Upon finishing our work we started again upon our journey and soon entered the industrial region of Pennsylvania, where steel furnaces lined the highway and coke ovens illumined the landscape, making the air heavy by their fumes. Here for the first time my companions saw labour in America at its highest tension. They were frightened by the pots of glowing metal and made dizzy by the roar of the furnaces.

Opportunity for labour was soon secured, but my companions entered into it so timidly that I tried to dissuade them from it, but could not, as here alone was steady employment offered to men of their class. I can still see them in the great yard of one of the steel mills, pale and trembling, as if facing the dangers of war. Half naked, savage looking creatures darted about in the glare of molten metal, which now was white, “Like the bitten lip of hate,” then grew red and dark as it flowed into the waiting moulds. Close to these hot moulds the men were stationed to carry away the bars still full of the heat of the furnace, and they became part of a vast army of men who came and went, bending their backs uncomplainingly to the hot burden.

I watched them day after day coming from their work, wet, dirty, and blistered by the heat; dropping into their bunks at night, breathing in the pestilential air of a room crowded by fifteen sleepers, and in the morning crawling listlessly back to their slavish task.

No song escaped their parched lips, attuned to their native melodies, and the only cheer came on pay day, when the silver dollars looked twice as big as they were, when a barrel of beer was tapped at the boarding house and this hard world was forgotten. Then they tried to sing from throats made hoarse by the heat,

With the song came memories of their native village, the inn and the fiddlers, the notes of the mazurka and krakowyan, and visions of the wives and children who awaited their return. To the town they went that day and sent $20 each, out of the month’s earnings, to Katshka and Susanka and Marinka, the anticipation of their gladness making them happy too.

It was the beginning of the second month and I had drifted back to watch my men at the furnaces. They were still carrying hot bars from one place to the other and had withered into almost unrecognizable dryness. I watched these gigantic monsters consuming them and as I watched a terrible thing happened. An appalling noise arose above the roar to which my ears had grown accustomed, and which seemed the normal stillness. White, writhing serpents shot out from the boiling furnaces and were followed by other monsters of their kind which burned whatever they touched, and before I knew what had happened the whole dark place was full of smoke and the smell of burning flesh. Eight men, my three among them, had been caught by the molten metal, scorched in its own fire and consumed by its unquenchable appetite. What happened? Nothing. A coroner came to view the remains,—of which there were practically none; out of the centre of the cooled metal, lumps of steel were cut and buried,—and that is all that happened; and oh, it happens so often!

As I write this, the daily paper lies before me; the Chicago Tribune of May 13th, 1906. It devotes six columns to the horrors of the steel mills in South Chicago. I could fill the whole paper with the horrors which I have witnessed in mill and mine; and I could fill pages with the names of poor “Hunkies” whom nobody knows and about whom nobody cares. I cannot write it; it makes me bitter and resentful; so I shall let this newspaper reporter speak, and he knows but half the story. I know the other half, but the whole truth would hardly sound credible.

Centre of Mill Horrors

Here in this hospital building and its environment centres the horror of horrors of the untutored mill workman. Its inspiration is terror to the millman of the polyglot pay roll, as he enters the Eighty-eighth Street gate to his work.

Hun, Pole, Austrian, Bulgarian, Bohemian—the “Hunkies” of Illinois Steel colloquialism—indifferent to pain of shattered, burned, mangled body, grow frantic as the stretcher bearers near this fortress hospital. At its gates, over and over again, the frantic, hysterical wife and children of the victim have begged and pleaded for admission against the grim barrier of the guards.

Why is it? You cannot get the information in South Chicago unless it be that these men are “ignorant.”

South Chicago distinctly doesn’t like the “Hunkie.” He jams the money order window of the post-office for two long days after the bi-monthly pay day. He sleeps sometimes thirty deep in a single room after the day shift, and he sleeps again in the still warm floor bed, thirty deep, after the night shift. He has his grocer’s book on which are entered his scant, half offal meats, which day after day are prepared for him by his hired cook; he wears little and he sleeps in that; his bed is never made, for the reason that some one always is in it; his money goes to the saloon-keeper or through the foreign money order window at the post-office.

He is merely a “Hunkie” in Illinois Steel or in South Chicago. What if the Illinois Steel hospital is his conception of Inferno?

He doesn’t know much. He doesn’t know when he is spoken to, unless it is by an epithet which makes any other man fight. Then he moves doggedly and often with little understanding. Not understanding, he is the chosen, predestined occupant of the hospital bed.

From Accident to Hospital

A “Hunkie” who has been “hunked” in Illinois Steel makes a lot of strictly corporation trouble. The chief “safety inspector” and his staff are alert and active at a moment’s notice of an unofficial accident report. The Illinois Steel photographer and his camera are made ready; the stretcher bearers seize stretchers to the necessary number and a hurried move is made towards the scene of the accident, of which the Chicago police department may never know.

On the scene, the camera is set and the photograph—which so seldom is ever seen beyond the gates of Illinois Steel—is made. Then the “Hunkie”—protesting if he be conscious enough—is picked up, put upon the stretcher, and the giant bearers of the body start for the hospital, which may be a mile away. There are difficulties in the march. Surface lines for ore and coal trains net the grounds. Often a train’s crew finds difficulty in breaking a train to let the body through; sometimes the crew balks and swears, and the stretcher bearers wait for the shunting of the cars.

In the hospital? Few people know and they don’t talk. There is a “visiting hour,” but the surly guard at the gate passes upon the applicant’s request long before the request may be repeated at the hospital door. And at the door they don’t encourage visitors.