Workers - An Experiment in Reality: The West — Chapter 7 - Part III - From Chicago to Denver

The Barton family had soon gathered at the married daughter’s home, and there with the greatest good cheer we had a picnic dinner of delightful cold meats, and the thinnest of bread and butter, and olives, and dainty home-made cakes, and the reddest of ripe cherries--all served to us as we sat just within the dining-room door or ranged in a semicircle about it in the shade on the lawn.

When it was over everyone was eager to start for the public green outside the town, where the afternoon’s sports were to be held.

It was not far, and we walked out, but almost a continuous stream of carriages was passing us in a common movement, and when we reached the bridge just outside the town the stream had narrowed to an unbroken line of vehicles moving slowly in single file.

At the centre of the bridge which spans a narrow stream below the public green stood an interesting figure as we drew up.

He was a tall, lean man of sixty, perhaps, but without a suggestion of old age in his lithe, sinewy frame; a Yankee by every gift of nature, with the sharply inquisitive face of a ferret and shrewd blue eyes with a gleam of humor in them and a little tuft of whiskers on his chin.

Every vehicle, as it passed, underwent an interested scrutiny from him, and his whiskers worked comically up and down as he cordially greeted the occupants whom he knew.

I was walking with Mr. Barton, and seeing us in the crowd on foot, he eagerly hailed Mr. Barton as a sympathetic old acquaintance.

“John,” he said, “I was just thinking as I stood here how I was to the Fourth of July celebration in these parts thirty years ago to-day, in ’62. And my gracious, it’s hard to realize the change!

Why, there warn’t a team of horses in the hull county then, and everybody come on foot or else behind a yoke of oxen.

But just look at that percession now!

There ain’t a ox-team in the hull outfit, and ther’s some rigs here that’s fine enough for the President to ride in.

” The common presented a truly festive scene when we reached it.

As large as a ten-acre lot, it was covered with a soft, rich turf and enclosed on three sides by beautiful woodland and on the fourth by the main-travelled road.

Horses, tied in the shade along the outer rim of trees, were munching hay from piles which had been thrown down before them.

Deserted vehicles, ranging from white-canopied prairie-schooners and rough market-carts to the smartest of new buggies, stood idly among the trees, and, with changing lights and shadows playing over them, were groups of picnickers seated on the mossy ground about white table-cloths which bore their viands, and some on rustic benches at rough tables hastily put up for the occasion.

But the dinner-hour was nearly over, and those who had picnicked in the woods were fast joining the crowds who poured in upon the common from the town.

The peanut and popcorn and lemonade venders were out in force, and you could hear from many quarters the professional tones of fakirs who invited the crowds to throw rings at walking-sticks, or rubber balls at stuffed dolls for cigars, or to various tests of strength on a variety of ingenious machines.

These had their votaries for a time, and there was much laughter and chaffing about the jousts, but the current of the crowd soon set overwhelmingly toward a quarter of the field where a baseball game was being started.

Two townships were to play each other.

There was no organized nine in either, but a volunteer one was presently secured from both.

Not without some difficulty, however.

I saw one sturdy young farmer offer his services as pitcher, and his wife, who stood by with her baby in her arms, pleaded with him to desist.

[Illustration: THE FOURTH OF JULY--“TWO TOWNSHIPS WERE TO PLAY EACH OTHER.

”] “Charlie,” she repeated with whining petulance, “you hadn’t ought to;

you _know_ you hadn’t ought to.

Just think how stiff and sore you’ll be to-morrow.

You won’t be fit for the haying.

” But the spirit of the sport was upon Charlie, and not only did he pitch for his township, but he took off his boots and played in stocking-feet to facilitate his base running.

Another young farmer, a gorgeous swell, with his best girl beside him in a phaeton-buggy, and with no end of a white waistcoat and a white cravat, and with a high, stiff collar chafing his well-burned neck, sat spectator to the scene for a time; then, unable to resist longer the demand for a catcher for his township nine, he asked the young woman to hold the horses, and, leaving his coat and waistcoat and high collar in her care, he caught a plucky game without a mask or a breast-pad and with only an indifferent glove, and he threw so well to second that the other side had to give up trying to steal that base.

It was a perfectly delightful game; not at all a duel of batteries, but like a contest between two newly organized rival freshman nines before any team-work has been developed, for both pitchers were hit freely, and there were plenty of the most engaging errors and the wildest of excited throwing, and at times a perfect merry-go-round of frantic base-running, during which it was difficult to keep track of the score.

We drove back to the farm in the cool of the evening in time for supper and the chores before nightfall, and at five o’clock on the next morning began again a day of work in the hay-fields.

* * * * * DENVER, COL.

, September 21, 1892. It is a long cry from Mr. Barton’s farm to this beautiful Western city, but the story of the journey can easily be shortened to a few pages, which will serve to picture its salient incidents.

Even at this distance of time and space I cannot touch in passing upon my parting with the Barton family without feeling again the sense of homesickness which accompanied me as, in the glory of an early July morning, I walked down the garden-path to the road, with her good-by and a gentle “God bless you!

” from Mrs. Barton sounding in my ear, and a last repeated generous offer from Mr. Barton of a permanent home, if I would stay with them, almost following me to the gate.

It was the best of the many chances which I have found open to men who are honestly in search of work and willing to work their way industriously and patiently to advancement.

I have found many jobs thus far, and in scarcely one of them have I failed to see the means of winning promotion and improved position, while not a few have seemed to me to open a way to considerable business success to a man shrewd enough to seize it and persistent enough to develop it.

Often, as I look back upon two thousand miles of country crossed--apart from the splendor of it--the almost overwhelming impression that it leaves of boundless empire wherein a growing, intelligent, industrious, God-fearing people are slowly working out great ends in industrial achievement and personal character and in national life, an impression which thrills one with a new-found knowledge and love of one’s country, with her “glorious might of heaven-born freedom” and the resistless resurgence of her boundless energies, and, notwithstanding all waywardness, a deep-seated, unalterable consciousness of national responsibility to the most high God; apart from all this, the strongest sense which possesses one in any retrospect of a long, laborious expedition like mine, is that of a wide land, which teems with opportunities open to energy and patient toil.

Local labor markets there are which are terribly crowded, as I found in Chicago to my cost.

Awful suffering there is among workers who are in the clutch of illness, or, bound by ties which they cannot break, are unable to move to more favorable regions; pitiful degradation there is among many who lack imagination to see a way and the energy to pursue it, and who, without the congenital qualities which make for successful struggle, sink into the slough of purposeless idleness; deep depravity and unutterable misery there are in the great congested labor-centres, many of whose conditions are the price which we pay for our economic freedom.

But the broad fact remains, that the sun never shone upon a race of civilized men whose responsibilities were greater and whose problems were more charged with the welfare of mankind, among whom energy and thrift and perseverance and ability were surer of their just rewards, and where there were so many and such various chances of successful and honorable career.

In leaving Mr. Barton’s farm I found much the same external conditions as those with which I had grown familiar ever since I left Chicago.

It was a rich agricultural region, and was inhabited throughout this section in curious, clearly defined communities.

In one quarter was a German settlement, and in another a Norwegian, and a Swedish settlement in a third, while I heard of a French colony as a curiosity in another direction, and even an organization of Quakers.

But there were native-born Americans in plenty, and chiefly of New England antecedents, as I found in my chance acquaintance with farmers by the way, and from observations of such a charming town as Algona, in northern Iowa, where I spent several days.

On every hand it was borne in upon one, not merely from what appeared but from the invariable assurances of those who have lived long in the region, that among the foreign population no fact is more thoroughly established than that of its swift assimilation.

So swift and sure a process is this said to be that the children born upon the soil, of immigrant parentage, seem to lose certain physical characteristics which would link them to an alien ancestry, and to take on others which approximate to recognized American types.

Their children, in turn, are said to be natives of established character; but of them all none surpasses the first-comers, when once they are settled and grown familiar with our institutions, in a stanch, honest conservatism and in a loyal, patriotic devotion to their adopted country.

It was nearly the end of July when I reached Council Bluffs.

I was well worn with walking, for the last two hundred miles I had covered in six days’ march, and I was glad enough to stop for a time.

But I did not wish to stop there, for my letters for several weeks past had been forwarded to Omaha, and were now awaiting me across the river.

Unluckily for me, there was a five-cent toll for foot-passengers on the bridge, and I had only one cent left.

It was the middle of an intensely hot afternoon.

I was too tired to begin an immediate search for work, and so I took a seat on a bench in the shade of the public square, near to a fountain which played with a delicious sound of coolness under the trees.

The park walks converged toward the fountain as a centre, and thither came the people who wished to rest in the shade or whose errands carried them through the public square.

Presently a sharer of my bench got up and walked on, leaving behind him a copy of a local paper, which I eagerly seized upon and read and re-read until I became conscious of the dimming light of early evening.

I was stiff and sore with the long, hot, dusty march, and uncomfortable at failing to get the letters upon which I had long counted, and I lacked utterly the energy to surmount even so slight a difficulty.

But with the cool of the early evening came the natural hunger bred of a day’s march, and the necessity of providing for that and a shelter for the night.

One of the streets of the city through which I had walked to the central square was named Fifth Avenue, and from one point on its pavement I could see through the open windows of a cheap hotel the tables in the dining-room spread for supper.

There were screens at the windows and light cotton curtains, and the table-linen appeared clean and the shaded depth of the room looked to me, from the blistering pavement, like the subdued, fragrant coolness of real luxury.

I retraced my steps to the hotel and asked for work, but there was none for me.

I found the way to the stables and applied there, but an old man with a long nose and a white, patriarchal beard told me that they were in no need of more men.

This was very different from my experience in the country, where everyone was in need of men and one had not to ask for employment but was everywhere urged to accept it, and I began to wonder whether for the sake of work I should be forced out again to the farms.

Near this “Fifth Avenue” hotel I had noticed a livery-stable which fronted on one street and extended through to another bordering the public square.

I went there next, and found its keeper seated comfortably in the wide, open doorway.

Taciturn and non-committal at first, he confessed eventually to his needing a man in addition to the two already at work in the stable, and, after some questioning, he told me to come back at nine o’clock that evening and receive his decision.

I was supperless and without the means of securing anything to eat, and there remained an hour and a half before nine o’clock.

In this predicament I had the good fortune to chance upon a delightful public library on the second floor of a building overlooking the square.

It was like the library at Wilkesbarre in its charming accessibility;

and, without a trace of the feeling of weariness or hunger left, I was reading ravenously, when, by some happy chance, I caught sight of a clock that was almost on the stroke of nine.

With thanks, which were exceedingly short and abrupt, I returned the books to an attendant in the library and then bolted for Mr. Holden’s livery-stable.

He was standing in the door when I came up, and, without preliminary remarks, “I will take you on,” he said, and then he added, almost without a pause, “I will give you twenty dollars a month and arrange for your board at the hotel [indicating the “Fifth Avenue” one], or thirty dollars a month and you manage for your own keep.

You will sleep in the loft over the harness-room.

” Without a moment’s hesitation I accepted the first offer, and wishing us good-night Mr. Holden left the stable in charge of Ed, one of the other hired men, and me.

It was too late to get anything to eat at the hotel, and so I sat up with Ed and helped unhitch the horses and put up the traps as they came in.

The last horse was housed by eleven o’clock.

I then found that with the aid of a hose a capital bath was possible in the carriage-washing section of the stable, and then I went to bed on a cot in the well-ventilated loft, very content in the knowledge that I had found a good place and should have a breakfast in the morning.

Ed called me at five o’clock as he was going below, and when I followed him he assigned me the two rows of stalls next to his own, which contained twelve horses and which were to be my first care.

All these stalls had to be cleaned and the horses fed before I was at liberty to go to breakfast, and it was with a royal appetite that about seven o’clock I applied at the hotel.

It was a very decent hostelry, largely made use of by farmers apparently.

I was at once accepted as an employé of Mr. Holden, and served to an excellent meal by a trim little waitress, at one of the very tables which I had looked in upon on the previous afternoon with such genuine longing, and with the feeling of its belonging to a degree of luxury far beyond my reach.

The twelve horses which had fallen to my share had all to be curried after breakfast and got ready for the day’s orders.

Calls for vehicles began to arrive in the middle of the morning, and they continued to come at intervals throughout the day, so that there was much hitching and unhitching to interfere with regular tasks.

Jake, the third hired man, was boss in the absence of the owner.

He had long been in Mr. Holden’s employ, and had a wife and several children in a home of his own somewhere in the outskirts of the city.

All the feeding, and cleaning, and currying, and carriage-washing, fell to Ed and me, while Jake, in addition to a general superintendence, had as his special trust the care of all the harnesses.

He took great pride in them, and certainly kept them in admirable condition.

Ed was chief carriage-washer and next in command under Jake, while to me, when my regular work was done, fell the odd jobs of keeping the carriages oiled, and watering the horses at the proper hours, and lending a hand at the unloading of the hay and feed as they came in--of holding myself in readiness, in short, to do anything that anyone in the stable asked of me.

A very good position it was, as I very soon found.

I had no great difficulty in learning the various tasks, and in a stable which, even in the fierce heat of August, was always comfortable, and at forms of work which were always interesting, and with every cost of living provided for, I was clearing five dollars a week.