Discussion 1

PART OF THE WORKING CLASS

Rose Pastor Stokes

Our lives were like our neighbors' lives. The Installment man came Monday mornings'

There was not always the d"ollar to give him. We would take the money from the bread

we needed, to pay lor the blankets we needed as much' The same blankets' in the stofe'

were half the price. All the neighbors knew it. My mother discovered it for herself' She

raged againstihe Installment Robbers. "But how many poor workels ale there who can

buy for cash? yes! ihat's why these leeches can drain our blood on the Installment Plan!"

tMv stepfather] loved my mother. He would have given her the moon and stars

ror praynings had he been able. The least he could bear to let her have were the few

"fr"up rr"* tlirrg, he was paying on. His work kept him driving his horse.?"1yugo"

about the city-oft.rr, in the averiues of the wealthy' Sometimes he'd be called into the

homes of the rich to cart away o\dmagazines, or bottles, or rags, or old plumbing

material, or discarded what-not. He knew the beautiful things the rich lived with'

My step-father's gains were uncertain. some days he'd clear two or three or three

and a half dollars. On otter days there would be no gains at all' There would even be

losses through a bad "buy." Oihe would be cheated in the sale of his load' On such days

the horse had to get his fled as when he salvaged two or three dollars from his labor' I

brought home little enough, that first winter: between one and two dollars a week' at first'

After that, from two and a half to three and a half dollars a week; and toward the end of

the winter nearer four'

Food became so scarce in our cupboard that we almost measured out every square

inch of bread. There was nothing left foi clothing and shoes' I wore mine till the snow

and slush came through. I had ofren to sit all day atmy bench with icy feet in wet leather'

I was worklniten or eleven hours a day latcigar making] with swift, sure hands'

Mr. Wertheim had ,id, orr. morning: "Rose Pastor, you're the quickest and best worker

in the shop!,, I didn't know or think how much I was earning for Mr. Wertheim, but I

knew I was getting hunger and cold for my portion'

All winter io.g i*or. the gingham dress and thin jacket' Every morning of that

winter, when my motiler tucked my lunch of bread and milk and an apple-or orange-or

banana-newspaper wrapped under my arm and opened the door to let me out into the icy

dawn, I felt the agony tnat tugged at irer mother-heart. "Walk fast," she would always say'

,,walk as fast as you can, Rosalie. Remember, it is better to walk fast in the cold'"

After the long day in the stogie factory, and after supper and the chores for

mother, there was -! Uott--tt ere *er" Lamb's Tales--the magic of words ' '- ' Before the

kitchen stove, when ih. horr. was asleep, I'd throw off my shoes, thaw out the icy tissues

that bit all day into my consciousness, and lose myself in the loves and losses, the

sorrows and joys, the gore-dripping tragedies and gay comedies of kings and queens,

lords and ladies of old-en times. I read and re-read the "Tales" with never-flagging

interest. But (and this is perhaps a noteworthy fact) with complete detachment' Not then'

nor later, when I read Shikespiare in the text did I evet, for even a fleeting moment

identify myself with the peopie of Shakespeare's dramas. The rich lords and ladies, the

ruling lirrgt and queens of *ho- the supreme dramatist wrote in such noble strain' were

alien to me. They moved in a different world. On the other hand, there lurked in my heart

an undefined feeling of resentment over the fact that his clowns were always poor folk'

7 He seemed never to draw a pool man save to make him an object of ridicule'

Instinctively, I identified myself with his poor'

At the end of wint"i t t ud quit the shop under the viaduct, and spring found me in

Mr. Brudno,s "factory." Mr. Brudno ran what cigar makers in Ohio called a "buckeye'" A

,,buckeye,, is a cigar ifactory" in a private home. In other words, it was a sweat shop'

In the three small rooms that comprised Mr. Brudno's stogie "factoty" were a

dozen scattered benches. Of the dozen workers at the bench not counting strippers,

bookers, and packers, six were Brudno's very own: four sons and two daughters' Several

others were blood-reiations--first cousins; and still another was a distant connection by

marriage.The remaining few were "outsiders"; young girls and boys and I came to filIthe

last unoccupied bench.

Mr. Brudno was a picturesque patriarch, with his long black beard, and his tall

black skull-cap, He had come from the old country with a little money (not acquired

through toil, rumor had it) and was determined to get rich quick in America. With money

and si', glown children, and the persuasive need of his poverty-stricken relatives and

compatriots here and in the old world, he had an undoubted advantage over the rest of us'

He put his children to work, and drew in his poor relations' In this godless America he

*ortO give them plenty of work in a shop *h.t. the Sabbath was kept holy! It was his

strengti, for they would work in no shop where the Sabbath was not kept holy' Their

learnlr's period io be stretched out far biyond the usual time limit, thus adding much to

his profits. The "outsiders" were young children. He hired them and drove them, and kept

reducing their paY:

H* *ouiA go about the "buckeye" dreaming aloud ' ' ' This was his first

sweatshop. ey-and-bye he'd have a bigger place-a real stogie factory with dozens of new

workers. Hi, ttildr.n would do all the work of foremen and watchers, and work at the

bench too. Soon there would be a big factory building all his own. ' , .

In the six years, off and on, that I worked for Mr. Brudno, his dream grew to

reality. He did evirything a boss could do to make his dream come true' Beginning in a

little i'buckeye," he soon moved to an enormous loft, where the dozen benches he started

with, were many times multiplied. There his factory hummed with the industry of boys

and girls, of men, women, and young children. The stripping and the bunch-making were

concentrated in one end of the vast room where the rolling was done. The raw material

was unpacked and sorted, the drying, storing, and other processes carried on in another

room. Driven by Mr. Brudno and our own need, we piled up stogies rapidly' Brudno paid

miserably little for our labor, and always complained that we were getting too much' But

before long, he was able to rear a factory building of his own, on a vefy desirable site on

Broadway- It was of red brick--and several stories high. There he drove us harder than

ever, andin time added another story to his Broadway structure' Now he was a big

"manufacturer"; he strutted about and watched us manufacture.

when the "buckeye" moved to the big loft and became a factory, Mr. Brudno

announced a cut. The stogie-rollers were getting fourteen cents a hundred. Now it would

be thirteen. We took the cut in silence. Wi were for the most part poor little child slaves,

timid and unorganized. The thought of union never occurred to us. There was no strength

in uS or behind us. It was each orie by his lone self. Not one of us would have ventured to

;t, hir little self against the boss. We merely looked into one another's faces. No words' But each had the same thought in mind: Now there would be less of something that was

already scarce: Bread, milk,-or coal. Mr. Brudno owned the factory and we were his

workers. Nothing "orid be done about it. So we raced some more ' ' . and still more, and

morel

It never occwred to me that I was being used by the boss to set the pace in his

stogie factory . . . . And that one cut would follow another, as our speed increased " "

A cut came the week that the new baby came'

"Rosalie!"

My step-father'S voice, tense and unnatural with excitement, shook me out of

sleep.

I heard my mother's shriek piercing the deep night, and rushed into the room next to

mine.

"Mother! oh, my mother!" what could be wrong with my mother?

My step-father rushed after me, and snatched me out of the room.

,,Rosalie, run to the midwife! Say she's to come right away. Mother's giving birth'

Quick!"

"Giving birth?" A new baby coming! . . . Out inlo the dark, chill, deserted streets I

went, shoes unbuttoned, hair loose in the wind, feet flying . ' . '

It was hard enough to scrape together the ten dollars for the midwife. To get help

for the two weeks of confinement was 6ut of the question. For those two weeks, aftet

shop, I did the work at home. There was no water in the flat on Liberal Street' I had to

cariy pails of water from the pump in the yard to fillthe wash tubs upstairs and take the

wute, down to spill. How heavy the sheets wefe, and how hard to rub clean! ' ' ' Every

day of the two weeks, I washed: Diapers, sheets, other "linens," carrying water up and

down, up and down, iitt utt *u, *urh"d and rinsed, and the white things hanging out on

the line in the Yard.

Something was in the air. Not only at Brudno's, but everywhere' Our little world

of working fathers, dependent mothers, and young bread-winners was tense with an

apprehension never felt before.

We were always hanging over a precipice. But now we felt that something was

going to break; that the p.".iri*t bit of shali we called "life" to which we clung in such

iesplration would give iay; and that we-al| of us-with our poverty and our crust of

bread, would go "rirhing down to disaster! This was the beginning of the crisis of 1893'

My stJp-father, tf,ough no worker in a factory, felt the effects of the crisis along

with the rest of our class. His horse and wagon now carried fewer and of the loads that

gaye aprecarious living. At the week's end, after all was paid--feed and stall for the horse

ind shed-rent for the wagon--he would find only four or five dollars clear.

He worked harder now and cleared less. He would bring his diminishing loads to

the warehouses, and get smaller return for them with every passing day. A deep

depression settled uPon him.

My own *oik too fell off. Most of the workers at Brudno's were sent home. A

few were kept on part-time. These were the quickest and best workers--the most

pronOUt" to him in brsy season--the boss preferred not to lose them' He pretended to be

generous in keeping us on the payroll'

The three or three-and-a-half dollars I brought, when added to the miserable little

that my poor step-father was able to bring in, spelled deeper need for us' Mr. Brudno was often in a genial mood now, but not too often' Frequently he was

morose; at times, vindictive. His biack skull-cap announced the mood. If he came through

the swinging doors with the cap to his right o. Gft ear. we expected taciturnity or jest' If

the cap slat Jgainst the back of -trls skull we looked for trouble. Then no work he examined

*u, gooa eniugh for him. He would go from rack to rack, picking up handfuls of stogies'

A mis-roll or two, a head or two badly sealed; a slight unevenness in length would call

forth a violent fit of temper. He wouli n"A culses at the workers, break and twist the

stogies out of shape, and^ throw them into the drawer of waste cuttings! A morning's work

gone to the scraP-Pile!

The most intolerable fines were inflicted upon us. For example, the leaf tobacco

in which we rolled our "bunches" was often so rotted that we were forced to re-roll our

stogies several times, each time removing the worthless piece to try another' Or' the leaf

would be so badly worm-eaten we couldiot cover a third of the required number of

stogies. This bad stock retarded the work, It meant rolling two or three hundred less in a

lrrt n meant besidefs], unusual efforl; increased care and anxiety; and a nervous strain

that sent us home tr"*ftirrg from head to feet. Yet for this stock Mr. Brudno demanded

the same standard of workiranship and the same number of stogies to the pound that was

set for the finest leaf tobacco, and docked us heavily for the inescapable failure' When we

opened our slim pay envelopes, we wo,uld often find from fifty cents to one dollar and

fifty cents deduciei, orrt of u possible five dollars' When driven too hard, some one of us

would venture to complain in a timid voice: "But look at this stock, Mr. Brudno' How can

you expect the same work out of such rotten leaf tobacco? See this and this and this!--and

look at the holes in these. . . . Look! look! I just brought this pound from the stripping

room. We can't do the imPossible!"

,'Well, what's *rong with this stock anyway? Alittle hole, here and there; that's

nothing. Rotten? That ain'irotten. You pull too hard, so it tears' Don't pull, or you'll go

home." ,'Ask your own sons and daughters; they'll tell you what sort of stock it is'"

But if he ever asked them we were not told. The fines were taken out of our pay,

often without any previous warning; and those who complained too disrespectfully were

"fired."

If a period of good stock followed, we would race madly' Now is the time to make up for

the bad weeks! If then we succeeded--if we increased our speed and turned out a few

hundred stogies more than usual at the week's end, Mr. Brudno would announce a

reduction of a cent or two on the hundred. Before these attacks we were helpless sheep'

We knew nothing of organizing protest. A few of us dreamed. . . ' But nothing came of

our dreams.

Brudno's shop, however, was to have a strike--a curious strike confined to his

relatives. One morni n'g, atdaybreak, I was roused by a sharp rap at our door' It was Lyoti'

one of that group of blood reiations whom Brudno drew from the old country with tales

of work and freedom, in a shop that kept the Sabbath holy'

,,I came to beg you pleise, not io go back to the shop, this morning!" he said, "We

are on strike."

"We? Who?"

"The boss's relations," he explained. "We can't do the special work he gives us to

do, and live on the pay. It is impossible." Irousedmysleepingmother.Thechildrenwoke.Theyranortoddledtothedoor

of the tiny frame house in Orurg. Street where we now lived, half-naked; sleepy' yet

curious.

I kissed my mother, kissed each child in turn, and forgot for the aomenf that our

father, in despair, had left home the week before and had not been heard from since' A

strike at Brudno's shop! Every outraged feeling in me broke into exuitant rebellion'

,,I,11 stay out even if we starve altogether! Eh, Mamele?" My mother kissed me

and nodded assent. There were shado*, uf we contemplated the children' "But a strike is

a strike,,, said my mother. And Lyoti explained, ''If we win, you win too. If we win, the

boss will not dare to-press you harder than he is already pressing you' He will not dare to

take another cent offthe hundred from anybody'"

My first strike-a sympathy strike! i visiied workers in their homes that early

morning and got them to stay oui. I picketed the shop. Lyoti turned to me for many strike

activities. I did as directed and drewin others. At th; end of some ten or twelve days the

men returned in triumph. The boss had yielded to their demands, and the rest of us who

appeared to have gainea nothing, felt stiongef--even a bit audacious in the presence of the

boss. The old timidity never ugii"quite ov-ercame any of us--for was he not beaten in our

sight?

with the monopoly of the newly-invented suction machine, by which a worker

could tum out many times the number of .igurt made by skilled hand labor, the cigar

Trust came into existence. It was spreading-westward from New York' It needed workers

to operate the new machines, A Mi. Youn!, foreman at Baer's, had shown off my skill'

".orro*y of motion, and economical use oi material, to visiting buyers and

,'manufacturers." Mr. Young it was who was now engaged by the trust to start their

Cleveland factory, and who, in turn, engaged me to learn the suction-machine method'

and to teach it to other workers. Soon I was given charge of an entire floor' at fifteen

dollars a week.

But my job lasted only a few weeks. A Mr' Weiss, vice-president of the newly-

formed trust, was making a tour of inspection of their factories, and came to Cleveland'

Early one morning the elderly superintendent of the building stopped me on Ty way up

to the loft: "I'm Sorry, Miss Pastoi, but you can't go up to the suction-room'" His words

were like a blow. I could only stamm"r' "why-*hy-what have I done?" "Mr' Weiss was

here," said the superintendent. "He opened your desk, and- found a book'" Yes' I

understood. I had been reading a book, vanderveld e's collectivism.I went back to the

bench where, by terrific driving, I earned between six and seven dollars a week' But the

lesson in the antagonism between capital and Labor sank deep.

I remained a ,'socialist by instinct." However, within the limited franchise for

women I voted for socialist candidates (for school offrces) when I became of voting age

and went about with the vague notion that some day, in some way, we workers would

abolish wage-slavery. Wh"i the local political boss, who_ had a saloon on Orange Street,

asked me to ,,vote D'emocrat," I proudiy announced that I was a socialist and would vote

for socialist candidates only. Although-friends had warned me that "without this man's

good-will no good can come to anybody in the entire neighborhood'"

An attempt was made to organiLe several of the stogie factories. We hired a little

hall, got the workers to attend several times; speeches were made; the group held

tog.tf,"r. But when we appiied for membership in the Cigar Makers Union' we were toid 6

by the American Federation of Labor that there was no room in the union for unskilled

workers "The Challenge of Facts"

By

William Graham Sumner (1840-1910)

The constant tendency of population to outstrip the means of subsistence is the force which has

distributed population or.i tir. world, and produced all advance in civilization. To this day the

two means of escape for an overpopulated country are emigration and an advance in the arts' The

former wins more land for the same people; the latter makes the same land support more persons'

If, however, either of these means op"r, a chance for an increase of population, it is evident that

the advantage so won may be speedily exhausted if the increase takes place. The social difficulty

has only r.td.tgor. a temporary ameiioration, and when the conditions of pressure and

competition are renewed,^misery and poverty reappear. The victims of them are those who have

inherited disease and depraved appetiies, o. hur. been brought up in vice and ignorance, or have

themselves yielded to vice, extravagance, idleness, and imprudence' In the last analysis'

therefore, we come back to vice, inlts original and hereditary forms, as the correlative of misery

and poverty.

The condition for the complete and regular action of the force of competition is liberty' Liberty

means the security given to each *urihut, if he employs his energies to sustain the struggle on

behalf of himself urid thor" he cares for, he shall dispose of the produce exclusively as he

chooses. It is impossible to know whence any definilion or criterion ofjustice can be derived, if

it is not deduced from this view of things; or if it is not the definition ofjustice that each shall

enjoy the fruit of his own labor and self-denial, and of injustice that the idle and the industrious,

the self-indulgent and the self-denying, shall share equally in the product. Aside from the a priori

speculation, Jf philorophers who irave tried to make equality an essentiai element in justice, the

human race has recognized, from the earliest times, the above conception ofjustice as the true

one, and has foundei,rpo.rit the right of property. The right of property, with marriage and the

family, gives the right of bequest.

Monogami c marriage,however, is the most exclusive of social institutions' It contains, as

.rr.r,tLl principles,"preference,-superiority, selection, devotion. It would not be at all what it is if

it were not for these characteristic lraits, and it always degenerates when these traits are not

present. For instance, if a man should not have a distinct preference for the woman he married,

and if he did not select her as superior to others, the marriage would be an imperfect one

according to the standard of true monogamic marriage. The family under monogamy, also, is a

closed girp, having special interests and estimating privacy and reserve as valuable advantages

for family diveloprnent. We grant high prerogatives, in our society, to parents, although our

observation teaches us that thousands of h.r-un beings are unfit to be parents or to be entrusted

with the care of children. It follows, therefore, from the organrzation of marriage and the family,

under monogamy ,that greatinequalities must exist in a society based on those institutions. The

son of wise parents cannot start on a level with the son of foolish ones, and the man who has had

no home discipline cannot be equal to the man who has had home discipline. If the contrary were

true, we couldrid ourselves at once of the wearing labor of inculcating sound morals and

manners in our children' 6

Private property, also, which we have seen to be a feature of society organized in accordance

with the natural conditions of the struggle. For existence produces inequalities between men. The

struggle for existence is aimed against nature. It is from her niggardly hand that we have to wrest

the satisfaction for our needs, but our fellow-men are our competitors for the meager supply.

Competition, therefore, is a law of nature. Nature is entirely neutral; she submits to him who

mosienergetically and resolutely assails her. She grants her rewards to the fittest, therefore,

without regard to other considerations of any kind. If, then, there be liberty, men get from her

just in proportion to their works, and their having and enjoying are just in proPorlion to their

teing andiheir doing. Such is the system of nature. If we do not like it, and if we try to amend it,

there is only one *ay i, which we can do it. We can take from the better and give to the worse'

We can deflect the penalties of those who have done ill and throw them on those who have done

better. We can take the rewards from those who have done better and give them to those who

have done worse. We shall thus lessen the inequalities. We shall favor the survival of the

unfittest, and we shall accomplish this by destroying liberty. Let it be understood that we cannot

go outside of this alternative; liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality,

iurvival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the

latter carries society downwards and favors all its worst members.

For three hundred years now men have been trying to understand and reahze liberty' Liberty is

not the right or chance to do what we choose; there is no such liberty as that on earth' No man

can do as he chooses: the autocrat of Russia or the King of Dahomey has limits to his arbitrary

will; the savage in the wilderness, whom some people think free, is the slave of routine, tradition,

and superstitious fears; the civilized man must earn his living, or take care of his property, or

.orr..d. his own will to the rights and claims of his parents, his wife, his children, and all the

persons with whom he is connected by the ties and contracts of civilized life.

What we mean by liberty is civil liberty, or liberty under law; and this means the guarantees of

law that a man shall not be interfered with while using his own powers for his own welfare. It is,

therefore, a civil and political status; and that nation has the freest institutions in which the

guarantees of peace for the laborer and security for the capitalist are the highest' Liberty,

Iherefore, [does] not by any means do away with the struggle for existence. We might as well try

to do away with the need of eating, for that would, in effect, be the same thing. What civil liberty

does is to turn the competition of man with man from violenoe and brute force into an industrial

competition under which men vie with one another for the acquisition of material goods by

industry, energy, skill, frugality, prudence, temperance, and other industrial virtues' Under this

changed orOeiof tnings the inequalities are not done away with. Nature still grants her rewards

of hairing and enjoying, according to our being and doing, but it is now the man of the highest

training Ld not it. rnurr of the heaviest fist who gains the highest reward. It is impossible that

the mai with capital and the man without capital should be equal. To affirm that they are equal

would be to sayihat amanwho has no tool can get as much food out of the ground as the man

who has u ,pud" or a plough; or that the man who has no weapon can defend himself as well

against hosiile beasts or hostile men as the man who has a weapon. If that were so, none of us

would work any more. We work and deny ourselves to get capital just because, other things

being equal, the man who has it is superior, for attaining all the ends of life, to the man who has

it noi. Ctnsidering the eagerness with which we all seek capital and the estimate we put upon it,

either in cherishing if it wi have it, or envying others who have it whiie we have it not, it is very 1

stfange what platitudes pass current about it in our society So soon as we begin to genetaltze

about it. If our y"""g d;ple really believed some of the teachings they h-ear' it would not be

amiss to preach tt.ri u ,"i*o, once in a while to reassure them, setting forth that it is not wicked

to be rich, nay even, that it is not wicked to be richer than your neighbor' ' ' '

{< {< tk

we have now before us the facts of human rife out of which the social probrem spring' s. These

facts are in many respects hard and stern. It is by strenuous exertion only that each one of us can

sustain himself against the destructive forces and the ever recurring needs of life; and the higher

the degree to which we seek to carry our development the greater is the proportionate cost of

every step. For help in the struggle we can onlyiook back io those in the previous generation

who are responsible for our .*iri.n... In the cimpetition of life the son of wise and prudent

ancestors has immense advantages over the Son of uitiottt and imprudent ones' The man who

has capital possesses immeasurible advantages for the struggle of life- over him who has none'

The more we break down privileges of crassl or industry, and establish liberty, the greater will be

the inequalities and the more exclusively wlit ttre vicious bear the penalties. Poverty and misery

will exist in society just so long as vice exists in human nature.

From the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. Material is out of copyright' This electronic

hal sal 1 (@,nrurraY' fordham. edu

form is copyrighted, but the publish.r, g*rrt P"rmission for electronic copying and distribution

in print form for educational purposes and personal use' O Paul Halsall, July 1998 )fi

A MINER'S STORY (1902)

By Thomas OoDonnell

I am thirty-five years old, married, the father of four children, and have lived in the coal region

allmy life. Twenty-three of these years have been spent working in and around the mines. My

father was a miner. He died ten years ago from "miners' asthma" [black lung disease]"

Three of my brothers are miners; none of us had any opportunities to acquire an

education. We were sent to school (such a school as there was in those days) until we were

about twelve years of age, and then we were put into the screen room of a breaker to pick slate.

From there we went inside the mines as driver boys. As we grew stronger we were taken on as

laborers, where we served until able to call ourselves miners. We were given work in the breasts

and gangways. There were five of us boys. lies in the cemetery-fifty tons of top rock dropped on

him. He was killed three weeks after he got his job as a miner--a month before he was to be

married.

In the fifteen years I have worked as a miner I have earned the average rate of wages any

of us coal heavers get. To-day I am little better off [than] when I started to do for myself. I have

$100 on hand; I am not in deb| I hope to be able to weather the strike without going hungry.

I am only one of the hundreds you see on the street every day. The muscles on my arns

are no harder, the callous on my palms no deeper than my neighbor's whose entire life has been

spent in the coal region. By years I am only thirty-five. But look at the marks on my body; look

at the lines of worriment on my forehead; see the gray hairs on my head and in my mustache;

take my general appearance, and you'll think I'm ten years older.

You need not wonder why. Day in and day out, from Monday morning to Saturday

evening, between the rising and the setting of the sun, I am in the underground workings of the

coal mines. From the seams water trickles into the ditches aiong the gangways; if not water, it is

the gas which hurls us to eternity and the props and timbers to a chaos.

Our daily life is not a pleasant one. When we put on our oil soaked suit in the moming we

can't guess all the dangers which threaten our lives. We walk sometimes miles to the place--to

the man way or traveling way, or to the mouth of the shaft on top of the slope. And then we enter

the darkened chambers of the mines. On our right and on our left we see the logs that keep up the

top and support the sides which may crush us into shapeless masses, as they have done to many

of our comrades.

We get o1d quickly. Powder, smoke, after-damp, bad air--all combine to bring furrows to

our faces and asthma to our lungs. I did not strike because I wanted to; I struck because I had to.

A miner-- the same as any other workman--must eam fair living wages, or he can't live. And it is

not how much you get that counts. It is how much what you get will buy. I have gone through it

all, and I think my case is a good sample.

I was married in 1890, when I was 23 years old--quite a bit above the age when we miner

boys get into double harness [married]. The woman I married is like myself. She was born

beneath the shadow of a dirt bank; her chances for school weren't any better than mine; but she

did have 1o learn how to keep house on a certain amount of money. After we paid the preacher

for tying the knot we had just $185 in cash, good health and the good wishes of m4ny friends to

start us off.

Oqr cash was exhausted in buying fumiture for housekeeping. Irr 1890 work was not so

plentiful, and by the time our first baby came there was room for much doubt as to how we

worlld pull out. fow wages, and not much over half time in those years, made us hustle. In 1890- U

91, from June to May, I earned $368.72. That represented eleven months'work, or an average of

$33.52 per month. Our rent was $10 per month; store not less than $20. And then I had my oil

suits and gum boots to pay for. The resuit was that after the first year and a half of our married

life we were in debt. Not much, of course, and not as much as many of my neighbors, men of

larger families, and some who made less money, or in whose case there had been sickness or

accident or death. These are all things which a miner must provide for.

I have had fairly good work since I w-as married. I made the average of what we contract

miners are paid; but, as I said before, I am not much better off than when I started.

In 1896 my wife was sick eleven weeks. The doctor came to my house almost every day.

He charged me $20 for his services. There was medicine to buy. I paid the drug store $18 in that

time. Her mother nursed her, and we kept a girl in the kitchen at $1.50 a week, which cost me

$15 for ten weeks, besides the additional living expenses.

In 1897, just a year afterward, I had a severer trial. And mind, in years, we were only

working about half time. But in the fall of that year one of my brothers struck a gas feeder. There

was a terrible explosion. He was hurled downward in the breast and covered with the rush of coal

and rock. I was working only three breasts away from him and for a moment was unable to

realize what had occurred. Myself and a hundred others were soon at work, however, and in a

shorl while we found him, horribly bumed over his whole body, his laborer dead alongside of

him.

He was my brother. He was single and had been boarding. He had no home of his own. I

didn't want him taken to the hospital, so I directed the driver of the ambulance to take him to my

house. Besides being burned, his right arm and left leg were broken, and he was hurt intemally.

The doctors--there were two at the house when we got there--said he would die. But he didn't. He

is living and a miner today. But he lay in bed fourteen weeks, and was unable to work for seven

weeks after he got out of bed. He had no money when he was hurt except the amount represented

by his pay. All of the expenses for doctors, medicine, extra help and his living were borne by me,

except $25, which another brother gave me. The last one had none to give. Poor work, low

wages and a sickly woman for a wife had kept him scratching for his own family.

It is nonsense to say I was not compelled to keep him, that I could have sent him to a

hospital or the almshouse. We are American citizens and we don't go to hospitals and poorhouses