The men in the carts were soon out of our sight, but the remnant was large and was thoroughly representative. We formed a weird procession, this fragment of a company in the ranks of labor. There were few native-born Americans, one or two perhaps, besides myself; but there were Irish and Scandinavians and Hungarians and Italians and negroes.
A WEIRD PROCESSION
A WEIRD PROCESSION, THIS FRAGMENT OF A COMPANY IN THE RANKS OF LABOR
As a physical exertion, walking was not hard after our day's labor. It was a change and a rest, and we must all have felt the soothing refreshment in the breath of cool air which was moving down the river, and in the soft light of the early evening, which brought out in new loveliness the curves of the opposite hills and deepened the shades of blue and green. My own appreciation of all this and more would have been livelier but for two overpowering appetites, which were asserting themselves with unsuspected strength. I was hungry, not with the hunger which comes from a day's shooting, and which whets your appetite to the point of nice discriminations in an epicure's dinner, but with a ravenous hunger which fits you to fight like a beast for your food, and to eat it raw in brutal haste for gratification. But more than hungry, I was thirsty. Cold water had been in abundant supply at the works, and we drank as often and as freely as we chose. But water had long since ceased to satisfy. My mouth and throat were burning with the action of the lime-dust, and the physical craving for something to quench that strange thirst was an almost overmastering passion. I knew of no drink quite strong enough. I have never tasted gin, but I remembered in one of Froude's essays a reference to it as much inuse among working-men, and as being seasoned to their taste by a dash of vitriol, and eagerly I longed for that.
Half-way down the road we met some young women in smart dog-carts driving to the sunset parade at the post. In the delicate fabric and color of summer dress they seemed to us the embodiment of the cool of the evening. Suddenly I looked with a keener interest. With her fingers outstretched she was shading her eyes from the horizontal rays of the setting sun, and she did not see us, rather saw through us, as through something transparent, the familiar objects on the roadside. I had seen her last in town at a wedding at St. Thomas's, and fate unkindly sent her up the aisle on the arm of another usher. I laughed aloud, a short, harsh laugh, that escaped me before I was aware, and that had in it so odd a quality that it gave me an uncomfortable feeling of unacquaintance with myself. The two old Irishmen turned inquiring glances at me, and appeared disturbed at my serious look.
My room, when I reached it, was, in spite of wide-opened windows, like Nero's bath at Baiæ. The ceiling and walls glowed with stored-up heat. Jim was there making ready for supper, and I could hear Jerry and Pete in their room in similar preparation.
When I put my hands into the cold water, I could scarcely feel them; but the pain of cleansing grew sharp, and yet, when I had thoroughly washed them, although the fingers felt double their normal size, they were really less swollen, and were far on the way to comfort.
The reaction had set in now, and I could feel it in great, cooling waves of physical well-being. The table was heaped with supper, huge slices of juicy sirloin, and dishes of boiled potatoes and cabbage and beans, from which the steam rose in fragrant clouds. By each plate was a large cup of tea, so strong and hot that it bit like lye, and it soon washed away the burning lime-dust.
We sat down with our coats and waistcoats off. The men were in the best of good-humor, and the conversation ran into friendly talk. They asked me how I liked my job. I thought much better of it by this time, and I tried to wear the air of critical content. They may have had their own notions about my previous experience of manual labor, but certainly they did not obtrude these with any show of suspicion. They accepted me as a working-man on perfectly natural terms. Until Wilson came I was the only unskilled laborer among them, but my different grade was no barrier to our intercourse,and we met and talked with the freedom of men whose experience is innocent of conventional restraints.
Long after supper we sat on the porch, smoking in the twilight. A deep physical comfortableness possessed us. Each mouthful of meat and drink had wrought miraculous healing, and had restored wasted energy in measures that could be felt. My muscles were sore, but the very pain turned to pleasure in the ease of relaxation.
The men were town artisans, skilled laborers, attracted here by the abundance of work. Jerry was a plasterer, and Pete a bricklayer, and Jim a stone-mason. A short, slender figure, a smooth-shaven face with small, sharp, regular features, black hair, and gray eyes, is a sufficient outline of Jerry's personality. His air was that of a cynic, and there was a cynical flavor in his speech, but the sting of it was gone at the sight of his soft gray eyes, full of generous reserve of human kindness.
Pete was a well-set-up young fellow, of twenty-five, perhaps, plainly of German parentage. Like Jerry, he was smooth-shaven, and there was a striking contrast between his dark hair and his singularly fair skin and blue eyes. He was a bricklayer, and ambitious of promotion.He spoke hopefully of an appointment in the Navy Yard as a result of a recent examination.
Jim was the only married man among us. His wife and three children were in Brooklyn, and Jim went home every Saturday night, and spent Sunday with them. He was a handsome young Scotsman, with curling brown hair, and brown eyes, and a well-formed mustache, and a round face with full features. In the casual flow of our talk, Jim spoke of Burns, and quoted him with a ready familiarity. It was easy to catch the drift of his liking. Its set was steadily toward passages which sing the wrongs and oppression of the poor. Jim had none of the tricks of a declaimer; but with jerks of unstudied emphasis he repeated familiar lines until you were conscious of new meaning and strength. He was sitting with his chair tilted against the wall, and his heels resting on a round, and his hands clasped about his knees. His eyes were fixed upon the evening gloom as he recited:
Man's inhumanity to manMakes countless thousands mourn.
Man's inhumanity to manMakes countless thousands mourn.
Man's inhumanity to manMakes countless thousands mourn.
Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.
The verses seemed exactly to fit his mood, for he repeated them again and again, with lingering liking for their sense and alliteration.
Jerry broke in abruptly here with sudden,unmeasured condemnation of the dulness of evenings in a country town in the absence of the theatre, pronounced theátre. The drama had fired his imagination for the moment, for he broke through his wonted reserve and waxed fluent as he expressed his views:
"When I go to the theátre, I go to laugh. I want to see pretty girls and lots of them, and I want to see them dance. I want songs as I can understand the words of, and lots of jokes, and horse-play. You don't get me to the theátre to see no show got up by Shakespeare, nor any of them fellows as lived two thousand years ago. What did they know about us fellows as is living now? Pete, you mind that Tim Healy in the union, him that's full of wind in the meetings? Onct he give me a book to read, and he says it's a theátre piece wrote by Shakespeare, and the best there was. I read more'n an hour on that piece, and I'm damned if there was a joke into it, nor any sense neither."
We were presently yawning under the stars, and I was more than glad when the men spoke of bed. Almost in the next moment, to my consciousness, Mrs. Flaherty was knocking on the door, bidding us wake and not to go to sleep again, for it was six o'clock.
Of the five, this second day was the hardest.My body was sore in every part when I began to work, and the help of hardening muscles I did not gain until the third day. Mrs. Flaherty had skilfully bound up the slight wounds on my fingers. The merciful rain came twice to our relief, once in the morning and again in the afternoon. But this was not an unmixed blessing, for in the minutes of delay we could but calculate the growing loss in wages, and watch the sure vanishing of any surplus above actual living expenses. I remember making an estimate on my way to my lodgings that evening, and it was with much sinking of heart that I discovered that my earnings made a total rather less than the cost of the day's living.
There has been difficulty in the way of intercourse with the men. I speak no Italian, nor any of the Scandinavian tongues, so that my acquaintance has been confined to my own countrymen, who are few in number in the gang, and to the Irishmen and negroes, and an occasional Hungarian who understands my stammering German. And within the English-speaking circle, in the absence of this, there have been other barriers. There is wanting that social freedom that is most natural in Mrs. Flaherty's home. There is much of it among the foreigners. They hang together at their work, and sit inseparate groups through the noon hour, and one commonly hears, especially among the Italians, that picturesque volubility which sets you wondering as to the subject of such fluent debate. Among the English-speaking men, the Irish and negroes are as Jews and Samaritans; but aside from this, the general attitude is one of sullen suspiciousness. Few appear to know the others, and not even their wretchedness draws them to the relief of companionship. Sometimes we hear warm greetings among acquaintances, or see some show of friendliness, but this is markedly out of keeping with the general tone of things. The usual intercourse is an exchange of experiences, an account of the circumstances which brought them to their present lot, among men who happen to be working side by side or sitting in company at the noon hour. Quite as commonly one hears only muttered curses against the boss.
You would gather from their own accounts that many of the men are unused to unskilled labor. There is a singular uniformity in their histories. Nearly all have seen better days, and are now but tiding over a dull season in their trades, or are earning enough to take them to some other part of the country, where there is a quickening in the demand for their labor.
I found myself growing doubtful of these unvarying tales. The mechanism became too apparent. "I am really an efficient and energetic workman," each seemed to say; "you see me now in a strait of circumstances. You should see me at my trade, in which I am an adept. I am out of that employment now because of depression in the business, but when business revives, or when I can reach Chicago or St. Louis or Minneapolis, my labor will be in strong demand." Irresistibly one is led to the belief that most of these men probably have no trade, or, at the best, are inefficient workmen, who, unable to keep a job long, habitually pick up a living at work like this, in the careless makeshift of a shiftless life.
It is refreshing to meet others who are frankly laborers. All their lives they have been bred to unskilled labor, and they make no pretence of anything different. They are hard men who look out upon a world that is hard to them at every point of contact; but they are true men, by virtue of their honesty and directness, and one likes them accordingly. Some of them are old, and it is pitiful to see them tottering under the burden of years, and staying off actual want by forcing their rheumatic limbs through the drudgery of this rude toil.
I had noticed the absence of one of this coterie for a day or two when, in the middle of a morning's work, he appeared among the ruins. He was an old Irishman. His face was swollen from toothache, and was bound up in a cotton bandanna. His hands were clasped on his stooping back, and he moved with the painful motion that suggests acute rheumatism. For a time he stood watching us at our work and exchanging words with some of the men about his complaints, when suddenly he burst into tears. The men jeered him, and angrily told him to be gone. I had a sickening feeling of cruelty as I saw him go sobbing down the road; but when I spoke of him at the noon hour the men explained that it was a disgrace to have him crying there, but that they would see that his wants were provided for.
There was a revelation in the discovery of the degree to which profanity is ingrained in the vernacular of these men, as representatives of the laboring poor. They swear with the readiness of instinct, not merely in anger, when their language mounts to a torrent of abuse unspeakably awful in its horrid blasphemies, but in commonest intercourse, when their oaths are as meaningless as casual interjections. And almost never is the rude hardness of their speechsoftened by the amenities which seem so natural a part of language. The imperative, more than any other mood, is rudely thrust into common use. They are even punctilious in its employment.
A single instance will serve to point the nature of this graceless speech. Two boys of ten or twelve are employed in carrying water to the men at their work. One carries his bucket through the building to those engaged in the upper stories; and the other, a flaxen-haired, delicate child whose thin legs bend under his burden, serves those of us who are at work on the heaps below. Through all the day, and especially in its greatest heat, the boys run busily from the works to a neighboring pump, and return with bucketfuls of water, which are at once surrounded by thirsty workmen and emptied in a few minutes. Regardless of the prevailing custom, I always thanked the little fellow for my drink. Soon I noticed that even this instinctive acknowledgment seemed to embarrass him. In an interval of rest he came up to me, after receiving my thanks. "You shouldn't thank me," he said. "And why not?" I begged to know. "Because, you see, I'mpaidto do this," was his conscientious answer. A mere child, naturally gentle, and yet so bred to rougherusage that a simple "Thank you" jarred upon his sense of right! A few minutes later I saw the two boys in a rough-and-ready fight, and their language lacked none of the horror of that of their elders.
I shall be on the road again to-morrow morning, and I shall go as penniless as I came, but somewhat richer in experience. I have been through nearly a week of labor, and have survived it, and have honestly earned my living as a working-man. In the future I shall have the added confidence which comes of knowing that, if work offers, I shall probably be able to perform it. But this is not the only cause of my increased light-heartedness. I am frankly glad to get away from the job on the old Academic building. This is a selfish feeling, and is not without the cowardice of all selfishness. I hope for a job of another kind, for a time at least, because I wish to see some hopefuller side of the lot of common labor. When we draw too near to the hand of Fate, and begin to feel as though there were a wrong in the nature of things, it is best, perhaps, to change our point of view—if we can. This may account for some of the drifting restlessness among working-men of my class.
The salient features of our condition are plainenough. We are unskilled laborers. We are grown men, and are without a trade. In the labor market we stand ready to sell to the highest bidder our mere muscular strength for so many hours each day. We are thus in the lowest grade of labor. We are here, and not higher in the scale, by reason of a variety of causes. Some of us were thrown upon our own resources in childhood, and have earned our living ever since, and by the line of least resistance we have simply grown to be unskilled workmen. Opportunities came to some of us of learning useful trades, and we neglected them, and now we have no developed skill to aid us in earning a living, and we must take the work that offers.
Some of us were bred to farm labor, and almost from our earliest recollection we worked in the fields, until, tiring of country life, we determined to try some other; and we have turned to this work as being within our powers, and as affording us a change. Still others among us, like Wilson, really learned a trade; but the market offers no further demand for the peculiar skill we possess, and so we are forced back upon skilless labor. And selling our muscular strength in the open market for what it will bring, we sell it under peculiar conditions. It is all the capital that we have. We have no reserve means ofsubsistence, and cannot, therefore, stand off for a "reserve price." We sell under the necessity of satisfying imminent hunger. Broadly speaking, we must sell our labor or starve; and as hunger is a matter of a few hours, and we have no other way of meeting this need, we must sell at once for what the market offers for our labor. And for some of us there is other pressure, unspeakable, immeasurable pressure, in the needs of wife and children.
The contractor buys our labor as he buys other commodities, like brick and iron and stone, which enter into the construction of the new building. But he buys of us under certain restrictions to us both. The law of supply and demand does not apply to our labor with the same freedom as to other merchandize. We are human beings, and some of us have social ties, which bricks and iron have not, and we do not, therefore, move to favorable markets with the same ease and certainty as these. Besides, we are ignorant men, and behind what we have to sell is no trained intelligence, nor a knowledge of prices and of the best means of reaching the best markets. And then we are poor men, who must sell when we find a purchaser, for no "reserve price" is possible to us.
The law of supply and demand meets withthese restrictions and others. If it applied with perfect freedom to our commodity, we should infallibly be where is the greatest demand for our labor; and with perfect acquaintance with the markets we should always sell in the dearest. But the benefits of perfect freedom of supply and demand would not be ours alone. If we sold in the dearest markets, the employer would as certainly buy in the cheapest. He has capital in the form of the means of subsistence, and can stand off for a "reserve price," and could force us to sell at last in the pinch of hunger, and in competition with starving men.
As matters are, our wages might rise, in an increased demand for labor, far above their present point; but even under pressure of decreasing demand, and with scores of needy men eager to take our places, our wages, if we had employment at all, would not fall far below their present level. So much has civilization done for us. It does not insure to us a chance to earn a living, but it does measurably insure to us that what we earn by day's labor, such as this, will at least be a living.
As unskilled laborers we are unorganized men. We are members of no union. We must deal individually with our employer, under allthe disadvantages which encumber our position in the market as compared with his.
But his position is not an enviable one. He is a competitor in a freer market than ours. He has secured his contract as the lowest bidder, under a keener competition than we know, and in every dime that he must add to wages in order to attract labor, and in every dollar paid to an inefficient workman, and in every unforeseen difficulty or delay in the work, he sees a scaling from the margin of profit, which is already, perhaps, the narrowest that will attract capital into the field of production. The results of our labor are worth nothing to him as finished product until given sections of the work are completed. In the meantime he must advance to us our wages out of capital which is a product of past labor, his own and ours as working-men, and of other capital. And this he must continue to do, even if his margin of profit should wholly disappear, and even if ultimate loss should be the net result of the expenditure of his labor and capital. In every case, before any other commodity has been paid for, we have insured to us the price for which we have sold our labor.
Our employer is buying labor in a dear market. One dollar and sixty cents for a day of nine hours and a quarter is a high rate for unskilledworkmen. And the demand continues, for I notice that the boss accepts every man who applies for a job. The contractor is paying high for labor, and he will certainly get from us as much work as he can at the price. The gang-boss is secured for this purpose, and thoroughly does he know his business. He has sole command of us. He never saw us before, and he will discharge us all when the débris is cleared away and the site made ready for the constructive labors of the skilled workmen. In the meantime he must get from us, if he can, the utmost of physical labor which we, individually and collectively, are capable of. If he should drive some of us to exhaustion, and we should not be able to continue at work, he would not be the loser, for the market would soon supply him with others to take our places.
We are ignorant men, and we have a slender hold of economic principles, but so much we clearly see: that we have sold our labor where we could sell it dearest, and our employer has bought it where he could buy it cheapest. He has paid high for it, but not from philanthropic motives, and he will get at the price, he must get, all the labor that he can; and, by a strong instinct which possesses us, we shall part with as little as we can. And there you have, in itsrudimentary form, the bear and the bull sides of the market.
You tell us that our interests are identical with those of our employer. That may be true on some ground unknown to us, but we live from hand to mouth, and we think from day to day, and we have no power to "reach a hand through time, to catch the far-off interest of tears." From work like ours there seems to us to have been eliminated every element which constitutes the nobility of labor. We feel no personal pride in its progress, and no community of interest with our employer. He plainly shares this lack of unity of interest; for he takes for granted that we are dishonest men, and that we will cheat him if we can; and so he watches us through every moment, and forces us to realize that not for an hour would he intrust his interests to our hands. There is for us in our work none of the joy of responsibility, none of the sense of achievement, only the dull monotony of grinding toil, with the longing for the signal to quit work, and for our wages at the end of the week.
We expect the ready retort that we get what we deserve, that no field of labor was closed to us, and that we are where we are because we are fit, or have fitted ourselves, for nothing better.Unskilled labor must be done, and, in the natural play of productive activity, it must inevitably be done by those who are excluded from the higher forms of labor by incapacity, or inefficiency, or misfortune, or lack of ambition. And being what we are, the dregs of the labor market, and having no certainty of permanent employment, and no organization among ourselves, by means of which we can deal with our employer and he with us by some other than an individual hold upon each other, we must expect to work under the watchful eye of a gang-boss, and not only be directed in our labor, but be driven, like the wage-slaves that we are, through our tasks.
All this is to tell us, in effect, that our lives are the hard, barren, hopeless lives that they are because of our own fault, and that our degradation as men is the measure of our bondage as workmen.
This seems to state an ultimate fact, and then, with the habit of much of such thinking, to settle itself peacefully, with an easy conscience, behind the inevitable.
But for us there is no such peace or comfort in the inevitable. And yet, even in this statement of our case, we are not without hope. We are men, and are capable of becoming bettermen. We may be capable of no other than unskilled labor, but why should we be doomed to perform it under the conditions which now degrade us at our work?
Imagine each of us an ideal workman. Through all the hours of the working-day we labor conscientiously, with no need of oversight beyond intelligent direction; for each of us feels the keenest interest in the progress of the work, because we are honest men, and, with far-sighted knowledge, we know that by our best labor in any form of useful production we are contributing our best to the general prosperity, as well as our own, and that it is by our energy and personal efficiency that we may open for ourselves a way to promotion. Here clearly is a solution on ideal grounds. Is there no remedy that can reach us as we are?
Our ambition must be fired, our sense of responsibility awakened and enlisted in our labor, our intelligences quickened to the vision of our own interests in the best performance of our duty. Life will not be rendered frictionless thereby. Work will still be hard, but to it will be restored its dignity, its power to call into play the better part of a man, and so build up his character.
We have already seen how such an end isrealized in the initial betterment of character itself. Let us see whether something might not be done by an initial improvement in the conditions of employment.
Let us suppose now that we are not ideal characters, but ordinary men, whose lot in life is to perform unskilled labor; but let us suppose that we are an organized body of workmen. The contractor made terms with us as an organized gang for the removal of the old building. Our organization, from long experience of such work, was able to enter into an eminently fair agreement. The contract rests upon a basis of time. For the completed work we are to receive a fixed sum, provided that it is finished by a given date. If we finish the work, according to the terms of the contract, one week earlier, we are to receive a bonus in addition to the fixed amount; if two weeks earlier, there will be an increase in the bonus. In the meantime advances are to be made to us, week by week, in the form of days' wages, but so regulated as to protect the contractor against loss if the gang should fail to complete the work.
Every member of the gang is perfectly familiar with the terms of the contract, and knows thoroughly the advantages of an early completion of the job. We agree among ourselves upon thenumber of hours which shall constitute a day's work, and from our own number we elect a boss, who will give direction to our labor, and under whose orders we bind ourselves to serve. It is no part of his duty now to stand guard over us in the office of a slave-driver to prevent our shirking, for we effectually perform that service for ourselves, seeing to it, with utmost regard for our interests, that no man among us fails to do his share in the common task. The boss is now the best and most intelligent worker among us, and not only does he direct our efforts, but, with his own hands, he sets the example of energetic work for the securing of the best terms that the contract offers for our common good.
In a true sense now we have got a job. It is ours. The work is hard, but we have an object in working hard. Every stroke of labor is not a listless, time-serving economy of effort, but an eager and willing furthering of the work toward its completion and our own advantage. We are glad in the progress of our job, even if we are glad from no higher motive than our personal profit. We have a sense of responsibility and the keen interest which comes of that, even if they rise in no better source than our greed for gain.
It is true that the root of the matter lies deeperthan this. We may work under hopefuller conditions and be, intrinsically, no better men. Our selfishness may take on the refinement of the altruism that merely seeks our own in the welfare of others; our ignorance may become illumined by an enlightened self-interest; our vices may assume respectability; and yet our old hardness of heart remain in full possession of us. But the truly pertinent question is this: Nearer to which of these ways of living lies the living way? In which have we the better chance to become better men? Life in its present course is to most of us a miserable bondage. We work daily to physical exhaustion; and, with no power left for mental effort, our minds yield themselves to the play of any chance diversion until they lose the power of serious attention. In what constitutes for us the work of life there is no pleasure, no education, no evoking of our better natures.
All truly productive labor performed under right conditions is itself a blessing. It partakes of the highest good that life offers. It is a bringing of order out of chaos, a victory over forces which can be reduced from evil mastery to useful service. It thus becomes the type of that labor which is the work of life, the mastery of self in the building of character. In thissense it was that the monks of the Middle Ages framed their motto,Laborare est Orare—labor is prayer. But robbed of its true conditions and reduced to the dishonor of time-service under the eye of a slave-driving boss, who impels us with insults infinitely more degrading than the lash, labor is no longer prayer, but a blasphemy, which finds expression in the words which rise readiest to our lips.
I have been writing from the position of an unskilled workman, with no apparent allowance for my newness to the life. The physical stress and strain, for example, how different my experience of these as compared with that of the other men inured to them by long habit! A year or two of such labor, and how great the physical change! My hands would be hard, and the friction of this work, so far from wounding them, would render them the more impervious to harm. My muscles would be like iron, and would lend themselves with far greater ease to the stress of manual labor. Ten years would find me a seasoned workman.
But under conditions of labor such as these, what changes other than physical would there be? My body might be hardened in fibre to the point of high efficiency in manual labor, but the hardening of mind and character—is it likelythat this would be of the nature of the strength of more abundant life, or of the hardness of petrifaction?
I have received the strangest kindness from the men, the most tactful treatment of me as a novice. They laughed at my strenuous efforts to do what was so much easier to them, and they laughed when the boss singled me out for abuse, but never ill-naturedly, I thought. And those who made up to me, and with whom I picked up acquaintance, showed the kindest consideration. They never pressed me with embarrassing questions, but fell gracefully into the easy assumption that I was a factory hand or a "tradesman" out of a job. It was natural to adopt the general strain and speak of plans which involved my going West.
In spite of their roughness and hardness of manner and speech, one never felt the smallest fear of these men, and you had a growing feeling that their better natures were never far to seek. And yet in reality here they were, a cursing, blaspheming crew; men upon whose lives hopelessness seems to have settled; whose idea of work is a slavish drudgery done from the instinct of self-preservation and to be shirked whenever possible; whose idea of pleasure is abandonment to their unmastered passions.
I had a purpose in quitting work in the middle of Saturday afternoon. I went to my lodgings and asked Mrs. Flaherty for an early supper of anything that she could give me without trouble. Then I brushed my clothes and washed myself, and made myself as presentable as my slender pack permitted. My beard was now of nearly two weeks' growth, and my face was well burned by the sun, and my clothes, in spite of the protection of overalls, were much labor-stained.
I felt some security in my disguise, and after an early supper I walked over to see the sunset parade. On the road I met the men returning from the works, and had to run a gauntlet of questions as to whether I had left the job for good, and what I meant to do.
There was bustle in the camp; a running to and fro of cadets, who appeared to be subject to many calls; a nervous appearing and vanishing at the tent-doors of figures which were in process of achieving parade-dress; a hasty personal inspection of arms and uniform; and then suddenly, out of apparently inextricable confusion, there emerged, without a trace of disorder, the two companies, in double lines of perfect symmetry, before the inspecting officer.
Then followed the sunset parade. Seated on the benches under the trees, and grouped on theturf behind, was an eager crowd watching intently, in perfect stillness, every evolution of the cadets. The fascination was in the sense it gave you of abounding life, of youth and strength and vigor, brought to perfect unity in willing subordination to authority. Here was the type of highest organization, the voluntary submission of those who are "fit to follow to those who are fittest to lead." So much has civilization achieved for the purpose of self-defence. The mission of many of these young officers will be to take such men as those with whom I have been working, and teach them the manly lesson of obedience, and awaken in them the feelings of courage and loyalty andesprit de corps. Civilization is yet a long way from such organization for industrial ends, if ever such corporate action will be possible or good; but certainly it will not belong before civilization gives birth in increasing numbers to "captains of industry," who will feel with their men other ties than the "nexusof cash payment," and who will attack the problems of production with other aims than selfish accumulation. Under the direction of such leaders, workingmen will be led to far greater conquests over the resources of nature than any in the past, and, sharing consciously in these victories as the fruits of their own labors, there will open tothem a new life of liberty and hope in willing allegiance to true control.
The intense satisfaction I felt in the rest of yesterday (Sunday) was heightened by a feeling of hopefulness as I thought of the future of workingmen in a country like ours. Here are almost boundless natural resources, capable of supporting many times our present population. Under the stimulus of private acclamation, what marvellous genius and skill and enterprise have directed labor to the development of our national wealth! When, with the growth of better knowledge, there is added to this stimulus among the great leaders of industry a sincere desire for the common good and a purpose to make the conditions of employment the means of achieving this good, how far greater must be the industrial results, and how far better the lives of the workers!
I felt aglow with this idea as I walked, in the afternoon, down the road below Highland Falls. It was a warm mid-summer day, and in keeping with its restful quiet the air moved gently among the leaves in the tree-tops. I was disturbed by the sound of music from the deck of an excursion steamer, and, seized with sudden desire for a glimpse of the river, I vaulted a low stone wall, and quickly made my way over the mossycarpeting of a wood which covers the bluff above the water.
I did not see, at first, the abrupt ending of the wood and the sweep of an open lawn, and when I caught sight of that I was only a few yards from a rustic bench. There two persons sat, with their backs toward me, but I recognized the girl at once as an acquaintance, and I knew that I was a trespassing vagrant. The man I knew well, for he was a college classmate and a charming fellow, and I longed to ask his views on the question of the improvement of the lot of unskilled laborers by means of organization.
But I grew painfully conscious of my work-stained clothes, and my faded flannel shirt, and the holes in my old felt hat, and of how all these marked me as belonging now to another world. And so I quietly stole away and returned to "mine own people."
The Highlands, Orange County, N. Y.,Tuesday, 25 August, 1891.
I am now a hotel porter. More strictly, I have just resigned my position, and with the net proceeds of three weeks' wages, which amount to four dollars and two cents, I am ready to make a fresh start in the early morning. The leisure of this last evening at the hotel I shall give to the task of summing up the fragmentary notes which I have made in such chance hours of rest as were to be had in a service which has kept me on duty from five o'clock in the morning until eleven at night.
Why I have lingered here so long I scarcely know. The time has flown with amazing swiftness. I soon found my new job easily within my powers, as compared with the last one, and I have felt a certain restful security which has held me here for longer than I meant to stay. But I am ready enough to set out now, and I feel again a "yearning for the large excitement" thatcomes of life upon the open highway, and the chances of a living earned by the work of my hands.
I am not twenty miles beyond my last station at Highland Falls. It was raining when I left Mrs. Flaherty's home, and she pleaded with me to stay; but I had nothing with which to pay for further entertainment, and I certainly had not the courage to return to the job on the old Academic building. And so we parted, Mrs. Flaherty standing with arms akimbo in the open door of her cottage, a final protest against so rash a venture as her last word, while I lifted my hat to her and to Minnie, who peered at me from the shadow of the passage behind her mother.
It must be owned that the prospect was not encouraging to my new departure. At intervals of less than a mile, sometimes, I was driven to seek refuge from the rain. The mountain-road was soft with mud, and a secure footing was a fruitless search. In the hot air the heavy dampness added to the discomfort of walking. Only in a general way I knew that the road would lead me eventually over the Highlands to Middletown, which lies in my westward course. The beauty of the country was lost upon me, for the mountain was cloaked in a heavy fog, and allthat rose visible were short, succeeding sections of muddy road, bordered with forests of oak and hickory-nut and chestnut, with matted weeds growing thick to the wagon-tracks, and clumps of blackberry bushes standing here and there along the lines of tottering stone walls and wooden fences.
In the middle of the noon hour I reached Forest-of-Dean Mines. A general supply store stands on the roadside. It was thronged with Italian laborers. I waited in its shelter until the one-o'clock whistle recalled the men to their work, and then I made terms with an Italian boy, who was left in charge, for a five-cent dinner. The child spoke English with perfect readiness. Almost concealed behind the counter, he looked wonderfully important and business-like as he reached up to apply the weights and fixed his great black eyes shrewdly upon the oscillations of the balance. For five cents he agreed to give me two ounces of cheese and six soda-crackers.
This proved a hopelessly inadequate dinner, and by the middle of the afternoon I was painfully hungry. It must have been between the hours of three and four when, on a stretch of level road, I met a tall, over-grown negro youth with a bucket of sour milk in each hand, which was plainly destined for a pig-pen that I hadpassed but a few yards back. Looming dimly in the fog behind him, I could see the outlines of a large frame structure with lightly built verandas engirding it. I asked the youth what it was, and learned that it was a hotel, the "—— House."
'Did he think that I could get a job there?' He was doubtful of that, but advised my seeing the "boss," whom I should find in the office. The office was deserted when I entered it. Some men were playing billiards in the larger room beyond, which, with the office, forms the ground floor of a building detached from the main hotel, but joined by a veranda on the upper story.
I sat down, and began to dry my feet at a slow fire which burned in an iron stove. Presently there came in a tall man, straight of figure, with black eyes and hair and mustache and an uncommonly dark complexion. I rose with an inquiry for the proprietor, and he sat down with the assurance that he was the man. There were two definite requests in my mind. I meant to apply first for a job; but, expecting nothing of a permanent character, I resolved to ask work for the remaining afternoon for the sake of food and a night's shelter from the rain. To my surprise, instead of the negative I expected to myfirst request, I found some encouragement in the proprietor's manner. He owned to the need of a porter until the arrival, in a few days, of the man who had been engaged for that position. I declared my willingness to serve and to begin work on the moment. He pointed out that he did not know me, and that he was not in the habit of engaging servants whom he did not know. 'Besides, there was not much for the porter to do, and for his services he was paid at the rate of eight dollars a month and his board.' I was ready with a plea for a trial, if only for a single day, and presently the proprietor consented.
He rose, and at once began to instruct me in my duty. Standing on the threshold between the office and billiard-room, he pointed to the bare floors, and explained that they must be scrubbed every morning. He then indicated the score or more of oil-lamps with which the rooms were lighted, and said that these must be kept clean and filled. Next he opened a door from the office into a small room in which was a cot. That was to be my sleeping-place, and he showed me, in one corner, buckets and a mop and a broom, which were intended for the porter's use. Quite abruptly he asked to see my hat, and, wondering at the request, I showed himthe stained black felt with ragged holes in the crown. "That won't do," he said, and with the word he took down from a peg a porter's cloth cap with a patent-leather visor, and bade me wear it at my work. It was much too small, but by dint of holding my head with care I could keep it on; thus balancing the cap as best I could, and with the broom in hand, I followed my employer for further instructions. He led the way to the verandas, and explained that they must be swept each morning before the guests are up, and again in the afternoon, at the hour when they are least in use. They were nearly deserted now, and the proprietor told me to begin my work by sweeping them, and then he left me.
I could have danced with sheer delight. Not if I had deliberately planned it could I have effected a better arrangement. It fitted my needs exactly. A change to lighter work for a time was almost a necessity; for my hands were much blistered and torn, and they refused to heal under the friction of my last employment. And then—and my spirits rose buoyantly to this idea—here was a chance to see something of domestic service, and such another, under conditions so favorable, might not offer in all my journey across the continent.
"This morning," I thought to myself, "I was a roving laborer in search of work and with but ten cents in my pocket; now I am a hotel porter, with bed and board assured and an open field for observation, and some certainty of a surplus, regardless of the weather, when I quit the job, although, at its present rate, my daily wage is a fraction less than twenty-seven cents."
As I swept the verandas my plans began to form themselves with exciting interest. "Here is clearly a splendid opportunity. I have been frankly told that a porter is already engaged, and is on his way, and that my occupancy of office is simply for the interregnum. Plainly, if I can give evidence, in the meantime, of usefulness such that, when the regular porter comes, I shall be continued in some employment about the hotel, that will be a distinct achievement; and it will not be without a bearing upon the practical question as to what a penniless man may do for himself in the way of winning permanent employment that offers chances of promotion." I resolved to bend all my energies to that.
When the verandas were swept, I returned to the office and billiard-room, and began to study the field. The floors were sadly in need of scrubbing; many of the lamp chimneys weresmoked, and all were far from clean; the windows of both rooms were much weather-stained; and the paint on the woodwork could be improved by a thorough washing. I then went over the grounds, and found the walks in disorder, and the lawns matted and strewn with litter.
I lit the lamps at nightfall, and awaited a summons to supper. While in the region of the kitchen I noticed that an extra hand might often prove of service there. Back in my own domain for the evening, I found my offices in demand in attendance upon the billiard and pool tables.
By eleven o'clock the house was still, and I was at liberty to go to bed. Among the furniture in the office was an alarm-clock. This I wound up, and set for a quarter to five.
The morning was splendidly bright. When I stepped out upon the veranda the sun had already cleared the tops of the wooded Highlands, and, with the radiance reflected from infinite rain-drops in the forests, there rolled from their "gorgeous gloom" the "sweet after showers, ambrosial air." In no direction was the outlook wide; but the air gleamed in the sunlight with the crystal clearness which gives its peculiar quality to our autumn, and which so early asAugust can be had only at considerable altitudes.
But the scrubbing awaited me, and was a task of much uncertainty. In the kitchen I filled my buckets with water—cold water, I am sorry to say. I threw wide open the doors and windows, and first sprinkled the floors, as I had seen shopkeepers do, and then swept them thoroughly. I tried to apply the water by means of a mop with a long wooden handle; but failing completely in that, I detached the handle, and getting down on my knees, I went carefully over the surface with the mop in hand. Frequently I changed the water, and when the scrubbing was done I looked the damp floors over with immense satisfaction.
Until I was called to breakfast I spent the time in sweeping the verandas and clearing from the walks the twigs and dead leaves with which they were strewn after the rain. In no way was I prepared for the alarming surprise which was in store for me. When I returned to the office I stood aghast at the sight of the newly scrubbed floors. They were dry now, and were covered with fantastic designs. Every final movement of the mop was distinctly traceable in streaks of unmistakable dirt. And there was the proprietor at work at his desk, and he faintlynoticed me as I entered. I stood expecting my discharge, with what fortitude I could summon, but receiving no further attention from my employer, I hurried back to the work on the walks and drives. During the dinner-hour I brought a broom to bear upon the coiling traceries on the floor, and succeeded in softening their bolder outlines.
But scrubbing proved a peculiarly difficult art. On the second morning I did all that I had done before, and then got buckets of clean hot water and a fresh mop; and on hands and knees I went over the floors, wiping them up with scrupulous care. The result was no better, once dry, and the designs in daubs of dirt were as fantastic as ever. On the third morning I tried still a new plan, but only with the result of effecting a change in the designs. I was learning to scrub by an empirical process, and the fourth venture approached success. Hot water and soap, and a scrub-brush vigorously applied, and then a final swabbing, left the floors comparatively clean, and free from the persistent mop-stains.
Only one more of my duties I found difficult of mastery. Like scrubbing the floors, washing the windows was full of surprises. From one of the house-maids I learned that clean, hot,soapy water was the prime necessity. I was delighted with the first result, for after the washing within and without, I had visions of the glass in a high state of clean transparency. But the sun had absorbed the water, and left stains of tenacious soap, when I came to the polishing, and after hours of labor I almost despaired of ever bringing the panes to a reasonably untarnished condition.
The work has varied so little in detail that the history of a single day is an epitome of the three weeks' service:
I am up at a little before five in the morning. The floors of the office and billiard-room are my first concern; and by the time these are scrubbed it is six o'clock. Thechefearly noticed my willingness to lend a hand in the kitchen, and he rewards me with a liberal supply of hot water every morning, and a cup of coffee and a slice of bread at six o'clock when he takes his own. Fortified in this way, I sweep the verandas and walks, and rake the drives and lawns until breakfast.
There is a curious, horizontal, social cleavage among the "help." I belong to the lower stratum. I first noticed the distinction at our meals. The negro head-waiter, and the pastry-cook, and the head-gardener, and the companyof Irish maids, who do double duty as waitresses and house-maids, take their meals in the dining-room after the guests are served. The remnants of these two servings are then heaped upon a table in a long, low, dimly lighted room which intervenes between the kitchen and dining-room, and there we of the lowest class help ourselves. Our coterie consists of an English maid, a recent arrival from Liverpool, who serves as a dishwasher, three negro laundresses, two negro stable-boys and myself, with a varying element in two or three hired men, who drop in irregularly from the region of the barns.
Martha, the English maid, is chiefly in charge here, and she bravely tries to serve, and to bring some order out of the chaos; but the task is beyond her. We take places as we find them vacant, and each helps himself from what remains to be eaten of the fragments of the meal just ended. There is always a towering supply, but an abundance of a sort that deadens your appetite, like the blow of a sand-bag.
I reproached myself with fastidiousness at first, and imagined that to the other servants, who shared it, the fare was entirely palatable; and so I was surprised when, at a dinner early in my stay, one of the negro laundresses seizeda plate heaped with scraps of meat, from which we had all been helping ourselves, and carried it out with the indignant remark that it was fit only for the dogs, adding, sententiously, as she disappeared through the door: "We are not dogsyet; we are supposed to be human." And back to her afternoon's work she went, although she had eaten only a morsel.
These meals were curiously solemn functions; scarcely a word was ever spoken. Martha was "cumbered about much serving," and very heroically she tried to impart some decent order to the meal, and a cheerfuller tone to the company. I never knew the cause of the sullen unsociability which possessed us, whether it was ill-humor born of the physical weariness from which all the servants seemed constantly to suffer as a result of the high pressure of work at the height of the season, or the revolting fare which often sent us unrested and unfed from our meals.
It is the vision of supper that will linger clearest in my memory. The long, reeking room seen faintly in the yellow light of one begrimed oil-lamp; the ceiling so low that I can easily reach it with my upstretched hand, and dotted over with innumerable flies. The room is a paradise for flies, which swarm most in ourfood that lies in ill-assorted heaps down the middle of a rough wooden table. Here we sit in chance order, black and white faces often alternating; the white ones livid in their vivid contrast with the background of the room's deep shadows, and the others ghastly visible in the general blackness from which gleam the whites of eyes. Sometimes the two stable-boys find seats together; and then they bid defiance to the general gloom, and are soon bubbling over with musical laughter, that rolls responsive to the least remark from either. It is interesting at such times to watch Martha's face. The nervous energy which is always struggling there against a look of utter weariness shines victorious now, in the light of a new hope that a better cheer has come at last to her table.
From breakfast I hurry back to the work of putting the grounds in order. The walks I sweep every morning, and then rake the drives and the lawns.
It was at this work that I early found convincing proof of the completeness of my social change. The lawns at certain hours are in the possession of nurse-maids and infants. I have never calculated the number of children in the hotel, but their ages apparently mark every stage of advance from a few weeks to as manyyears. My liking for children amounts to reverent devotion, and it gave me a shock, from which I have not recovered, to find that, unshaven and uncouth in workmen's clothes, I had become for them a bogey with whom their nurses frighten them into obedience, warning them in excited tones with "Here comes the man to take you away!"
It was at this work, too, that I once incurred the avowed displeasure of a guest. She was a beautiful Philistine, with a keenly penetrating twang and turns of speech that bespoke the regions of Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. But she was remarkably handsome, tall and graceful, and of high-bred bearing and of a thoroughly aristocratic type. It must be confessed that whenever she was visible from my regions the section of the grounds which commanded a view of her, and was yet fairly beyond the sound of her voice, received assiduous attention from me; for she was highly remunerative to look at. I was sweeping a section of the walk immediately in front of the hotel. Unlike the work at West Point, a porter's duties do not preclude mental effort. Absorbed in thought and quite unconscious of my surroundings, I was suddenly recalled to them and to my station in life by nasal accents raised in strongreproof. I looked up in bewilderment, and saw confronting me the beautiful Philistine, holding a little child by each hand. Very straight she stood and bright-eyed, with her head thrown back, and an exquisite flush over her face, and her beautiful lips curled in anger, as she scolded me roundly for raising so much dust. I was unfamiliar with the etiquette of the situation, so I held my peace, and respectfully touched my cap, inwardly calling her the beauty that she was as she stood there, and ardently hoping that she would scold me more.