Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1894 — WORK IS HARD TO GET Curious Census Lessons. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WORK IS HARD TO GET

Curious Census Lessons.

HOW EMPLOYMENT EVADED ONE WHO SOUGHT IT. Traveled Fifty Thousand Miles Looking for Labor—From the Mississippi to the Pacific and Then to the Atlantic—ln a •‘Side-door” Pullman. Tale of a Traveler. It is a wide country, but a man seeking work may apply for it in every town in the United States between Bangor and Benicia and not find it, says a writer in a Chicago

paper. Of course, employment may be found at once, but the chances are the other way. Herewith is given a specimen case. A railroader reached Chicago four days ago without money enough to pay for a meal. The stranger had been working in one of the railroad yards at East St. Louis until the hard times of ’93 had thrown him out of work, and since that time had been, to use a phrase common among railroad men, “jumping sideways” all over the country. He was educated and intelligent, and had kept his eyes open during his trips in search of, as he termed it, “an office.” He carried a very creditable letter of recommendation from Chesapeake and Ohio officials for a long term of service on the trains and in the yards of that railroad. In the story he told are many points of interest, chief of which is the fact that since he started on his so-far fruitless search for work he has been in every State and Territory in the United States, has compassed a journey of 5u,,000 miles by rail on a capital so slender that it would have given a professional tramp the blues. Here is his story in his own words: “I lost my job in East St. Louis a year ago last June through a little law trouble. I fought the case because it was an endeavor made by a “shark’ lawyer to steal my wages, but in the end 1 lost both the law case and the job. I succeeded in proving to the superintendent the fact that I was right in lighting the case, and he recalled the order for my discha ge, but I found out that my reinstatement meant the laying off of a man who had a family, so I told him to keep the job. I could hustle for one easier than he could for a half-dozen, and 1 thought if I tried I could find a job somewhere. Now I believe j that I overestimated my ability as a hustler, for, while I have had clothes to wear and have staved off starvation, I am still ‘short’ on the job. “I had sunk my stpall capital in getting my experience of 'the law as she is writ,’ and had it not been for a friend 1 would have left the ‘Queen city of Egypt’ broke. The friend lent me $5, however, and 1 started West. “I tried Kansas City, but it was full of railroad men waiting for business to pick up, so I kept on west to Denver. There were no signs of any improvement there, but the boys said: ‘Keep on west; you’ll catch on in the mountains sure.’ So I decided to keep on. I went up to Cheyenne and got there at midnight, put up my last ‘half’ for lodging and breakfast and in the morning hit the superintendent for a job, but was told there were enough idle railroad men in Cheyenne to stock the division if need be. I was just a little blue. It was a toss-up’ which way to go, so 1 struck out for the west coast.” Surprise was expressed at his undertaking such a journey under such conditions. The railroader laughed and said: “It is no trouble to do

that in the west if you belong to anything. As far as traveling is concerned the local lodges of the railroad organizations all have contracts with the companies that, in addition to fixing the rate of pay, provide for the transportation of brothers who may be traveling looking for work. The west is almost perfectly organized, and a man will hardly get into a town before he is ‘flagged’(giving the .halting sign) by some of the boys, and they never let him go hungry. Holst the I’le SiKn. “If they are a little slow and the distance between meals gets too long for comfort the stranger can hoist the ‘pie sign' (distress signal), and if

there is a brother in the crowd it brings him forward. “From Cheyenne I went to Ogden, Utah, where I struck the Central Pacifiic, and over that straight to the Golden Gate. I found from the trainmen I rode with that there was no show for work on any of the divisions on the way, sol kept right along. Sacramento, Oakland and San Francisco were as bad as any of the places I had been in. The railroad men were banging together and hoping for better times, but it was trying business, as most of the men at work, and they were fe#“ enough, were •holding up’ from one to three idle brothers, hoping that in the near future business might revive and there be work enough for all. I saw plainly there was no use staying in any of these places, so I went down to Los Angeles on the Southern Pacific. The conditions there were no better. Railroad business in the West - was completely paralyzed. I couldn’t go any further west, so I started back east over the Southern Pacific, eventually landing in New Orleans after having interviewed every superintendent and trainmaster between the two points on the subject of work. “I came up over the Louisville & Nashville to Cincinnati, and from there made side trips into Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio, to points where I thought there might be work, but it was ‘no go,’ and I was getting awfully tired traveling in the way I had for the last three months. “I started out over the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton, intending to go through to Toledo, but at Hamilton, 0., I ran across an old friend, and I stopped off to see him. I told him my story, and he laid off a few days to let me make a stake. I worked two weeks, and with the proceeds got me a cheap suit of clothes and a pair of shoes, but I was broke again when I started for Toledo. “There was no chance for work there, so I went to Detroit, from there to Saginaw, and from the latter place up through Northern Michigan, across ‘the Soo,’ and after a trip across Wisconsin arrived in St Paul. I could find no encouragement’either in St Paul or Minneapolis, and just becau e I did not know which way to go I siar.ed west again over the Northern Pacific. “I tried Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland, Ore., but the search was in vain. The winter had set in, and the unemployed were almost starving

and freezing to death in the big cities. In San Francisco I saw men wearing the insignia of the railroad orders working on the streets. They would have been glad to get away from the coast, but they had families and could not raise the money to move them; neither could they let their dear ones starve. “I tried Los Angeles again, but it was worse than before; so I started out over the Santa Fe to Kansas City. “I steered clear of Chicago, because almost every day I met squads of travelers, who. like myself, were railroad men, and they all said the city was overrun with unemployed men. “I got to Kansas City in January and the people of that good city were on a continual hustle to keep their own unemployed from starving. I stayed one day with a friend and the next started over the Kansas City, Memphis and Birmingham for Birmingham, Ala., determined to try the Eastern South. I did try it. I went over Alabama, Florida, and Georgia like a deputy marshal with a search warrant, and at last in March struck what looked like a regular job in the yards of the Georgia) Southern and Florida Bail way at' Macon, Ga. They were handling an immense traffic in early vegetables. The job lasted twenty-three days; then came the worst freeze that country had ever experienced at that §eason of the year, and the vegetable trade was nil—likewise my job. “I squared up, got another suit of clothes, and started again. I went to Atlanta, and from there to Norfolk, Va., across North and South Carolina. From Norfolk to Newport News, and from there to Washington by way of Richmond. From Washington I went to Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, staying a few days in each place, but not long enough to affiliate with any of the ‘commonweal’ armies that were tramping over that country then. In New England Hay Fields. “From Boston I went all over the New England States, but with the single exception of a week in a hay field near Boston, couldn’t find a thing to da “The railroad men in the Eastern States are a ‘cold’ lot, mostly natives who have never’ been outside the State they were born in, and who look on a traveling railroad man as they do a common tramp. I nearly starved out there, and you can -tell all inquirers I’ll neter go East again. “The night I started from Boston there were two ‘Brotherhood’ engineers and ad O. R. C. man (Order Railway Conductors), who had been trying all day to get out over the ‘Fitchburg’ railway. We all wanted to come West, and we finally got out,

but it was in a side-door Pullman—a box car. “We got through to Rotterdam junction, New York, and from there over the New York Central to Buffalo, where I left them and went through Western Pennsylvania to Pittsburg, but that city was no

good, so I came on here over the Panhandle. “I started a year ago last June, and since then have been in every State and Territory of Uncle Sam’s domain. I have ridden over somewhere near 200 railroads, have made applications for work in the offices of over 600 superintendents and trainmasters, and if I could have traveled in one direction all the time I would now have been fairly started on my third lap around the globe. I have tried to keep clean and so far I haven’t starved, though I shudder to think of the many meals I have ‘run by,’ and I have not slept in a bed for over two months now; haven't had my clothes off only when I could strike a river where I could take a bath. In my riding part of it has been on passes, part on ‘card’ or letters, and in a few instances, through the East, a box car. ”

Slowly the public is getting some intelligible ideas from the census compilation of four years ago. The clerks have at last figured out that there were then just 7,992.973 “home families” in the United States, which means probably that there were that many groups of persons living together. Of these almost five-eighths—

in exact figures, 4,767,179 —were on farms and the remainder in cities. It thus appears that the country and the city population grouped in families is as five to three. Another statement is that the number of persons in a family is on an average less than five, so that the persons forming parts of the families are only about two-thirds of the total population. The other third, or about 20,000,000 persons, seem to be, therefore. living independently of family ties. This is a rather curious showing. One-third of the entire population consists, presumably, of boarders, or of inmates of charitable and correctional institutions. As our paupers and criminals are not more numerous than those of other countries, the natural inference is that the habit of living in boarding-houses or hotels is far more prevalent than it is anywhere else. Another thing that is surprising in these census figures of ours is. that we have fewer houses in proportion to papulation than the French have, for instance. In the United States the average is about five and a half persons to a house, while in France it is only tour and three quarters, and jet the latter country is far more densely populated than even our oldest settled States along the North Atlantic coast. The tendency is, however, toward fewer inhabitants to a house in this country. The decrease has been exceedingly slow buts it has been fairly steady. In 1850 we had nearlj’ six persons to a house, so that there has been a reduction of about half a person since then. On the principle of the fewer persons under the same roof the higher the grade of civilization, we are justified in congratulating ourselves on this fact.

RAISES THE PIE SIGN.

IN A NEW ENGLAND HAT FIELD.

THE SIDE-DOOR PULLMAN.

NEGOTIATIONS FOR CLOTHES.