Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 262, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1911 — HAPPENINGS IN THE CITILS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HAPPENINGS IN THE CITILS

Chicago Has a Port of Missing Men

CHICAGO. —From the Graham ft Morton dock, at the foot of Wabash avenue, three men walked into the Chicago river the other morning. Four policemen wearily fished them out and left them to dry on the wharf. These three men are dally associates of the followiitg distinguished persons: . Jj. -'h A brother of a former, president's law partner. A son of . a millionaire brewer. A brother of a stock exchange operator. A brother of a Chicago police officer, . v ' Some day one of these four men may decide to take a promenade in the water and perhaps the police will get them out, and perhaps they won’t. For the four distinguished persons, as well as the three undistinguished ones, only “wharf rats” and their deaths would probably trouble the city as little as their near-deaths troubled the officers who rescued the three. . V There is a story called “The Port of; Missing Men.” O. Burke, dock superintendent for Graham ft Morton, thinks he knows where the port t is.

Hundreds of men have dropped suddenly out of sight. Many of these, according to Mr. Burke, are laboring now along the docks of the Chicago river, unloading boats for 25 cents an hour, and, like the three who nearly drowned, occasionally dropping, or nearly dropping, out of all existence. The casual attitude is the thing which draws the men to the docks. At 3 o’clock every morning a Graham ft Morton steamer in loaded with fruit. The fruit must be moved into warehouses quickly. Two or three hours of working time is as much as can be spared. Two hundred men are .necessary: The two hundred ihen are always there. They begin drifting down to the dock at nightfall, and by midnight they are spread along its length, sleeping the untroubled, sleep of the irresponsible. When the boat comes in they awake and, forming in long lines, transport the cargo, in the manner of a bucket brigade, to the warehouse. When the boat is unloaded they are paid on the spot ’’ Occasionally one of the workers disappears. After a week or two. his fel-low-workers notice that he is gone. They make no inquiries. Perhaps he has fallen into the river, perhaps he has taken a freight train to other countries, perhaps he has quietly resumed his place in a former life. The subject is of small interest to other men. - • •