The Iron Puddler Part 4

These things are the tragedies of the poor. And although such a misfortune never happened to me, this problem stared me in the face when I began carrying those fatal telegrams. I tackled the problem with a boyish mind. I soon resolved it into these propositions:

When a laborer dies his little children are scattered to the winds.

Brothers and sisters may never see one another again.

When a man with property dies, his children are kept together. Their future is made safe by the property.

Labor provides for to-day. Property provides for to-morrow.

That truth was driven into my mind when I saw one family after another scattered by the death of a laborer. A merchant in Sharon died, and his children, after the funeral, kept right on going to school. There was no doubting the truth of my rule: Labor makes the present day safe--but the present day only. Capital safeguards the future.

From that day on, I argued that we should buy a home and save a little every day for capital. It was our duty thus to protect ourselves, should our father die, against being scattered among strangers.

CHAPTER X. MELODRAMA BECOMES COMEDY

Every race gets a nickname in America. A Frenchman is a "frog," a negro a "c.o.o.n" and a Welshman a "goat." All the schoolboys who were not Welsh delighted in teasing us by applying the uncomplimentary nickname. This once resulted at the Sharon operahouse, in turning a dramatic episode into a howling farce.

I was acting as a super in the sensational drama She, by H. Rider Haggard. Two Englishmen were penetrating the mysterious jungles of Africa, and I was their native guide and porter. They had me all blacked up like a negro minstrel, but this wasn't a funny show, it was a drama of mystery and terror. While I was guiding the English travelers through the jungle of the local stage, we penetrated into the land of the wall-eyed cannibals.

The cannibals captured me and prepared to eat me in full view of the audience while the Englishmen behind the trees looked on in horror. The cannibals, who were also supers led by an actor of the "troupe," set up a hot pot to boil my bones in. I was bound hand and foot, while the cannibals, armed with spears, danced around me in a heathen ceremony, chanting a voodoo chant and reciting a rigmarole by which cannibals are supposed to make their human feast on a sacred rite. As they danced about me in a circle, they sang:

"Is it an ox? Him-yah, him-yah." And they jabbed their spears into me.

Some of the supers jabbed me pretty hard, among them Babe Durgon, who delighted in tormenting me.

"Is it a sheep? Him-yah, him-yah." Again they jabbed me, and I was so mad I was cussing them under my breath.

"Is it a pig? Him-yah, him-yah."

The audience was breathless with tense excitement.

"Is it a goat?"

The entire gallery broke into a whirlwind roar: "Yes! yes! He's a goat."

Laughter rocked the audience. They all knew I was Welsh and saw the joke. The horror and suspense had been so great that when it broke with comic relief the house was really hysterical. It stopped the show.

I played supernumerary parts in many shows that winter including Richard III and other Shakespearean plays. At the battle of Bosworth field where Richard cries: "A horse, a horse; my kingdom for a horse," the supers in the army were clattering their swords on the opposing s.h.i.+elds in a great hubbub and shouting, "Hay, hay hay!" I was of a thrifty turn of mind, and said: "Hold on, boys. Don't order too much hay until we see whether he gets the horse or not."

A hypnotist came to the opera-house and I volunteered to be hypnotized.

He couldn't hypnotize me. I felt rather bad about it. I was out of the show. Later I learned that all of the "Perfessor's" best subjects came with him under salary, and the local boys who made good were faking like the professionals. The whole thing was a cheat and I had not caught on.

I was too serious-minded to think of faking. But several of the boys took to it naturally, and among them was Babe Durgon, the bully. He could be hypnotized and I couldn't. But several years later I had the satisfaction of "hypnotizing" him myself, as I told about in my first chapter.

Although I always regarded myself as a humorist, the impression I made on my comrades was that of a serious and religious fellow. I quoted the Bible to them so often that they nicknamed me "the Welsh Parson." I was the general errand boy of the town. Everybody knew me. And when there was a job of pa.s.sing hand-bills for the operahouse, or ringing bells for auction sales, I always got the job. Every nickel that rolled loose in the town landed in my pocket and I took it home to mother. Mother was my idol and what she said was law. One night I heard the band playing and started down-town. Mother told me to be sure to be in bed by nine o'clock. I found that a minstrel show had been thrown out of its regular route by a flood and was playing our town unexpectedly. The stage hands knew me and pa.s.sed me in. I was seeing a high-priced show for nothing.

But when it came nine o'clock, I went home. I told my mother that I had walked out of the most gorgeous minstrel show. She asked me why and I told her because she wanted me to be in bed by nine o'clock.

"Why, Jimmy," she said, "I wanted you to be in bed so you wouldn't be in bad company. It would have been all right for you to have stayed at the minstrel show. All I want to know is that you are in good company."

I guess mother thought I was a bit soft, but I had seen the best part of the show, as in those days the curtain rose at seven forty-five.

Minstrel shows were the greatest delight of my youth. I learned to dance and could sing all the songs and get off the jokes. Dupree & Benedict's were the first minstrels I ever saw. I marched in their parade and carried the drum. George Evans (Honey Boy) was a life-long friend. We were born within three miles of each other in Wales and came to this country at about the same time.

CHAPTER XI. KEEPING OPEN HOUSE

Our little four-room company-house in Sharon had its doors open to the wayfarer. There was always some newcomer from Wales, looking for a stake in America, who had left his family in Wales. Usually he was a distant kinsman, but whether a blood relation or not, we regarded all Welshmen as belonging to our clan. Our house was small, but we crowded into the corners and made room for another. His food and bed were free as long as he stayed. We helped him find a job, and then he thanked us for our hospitality and went out of our house with our blessings upon him. This form of community life was the social law in all the cottages of the Welsh.

It was like the law of tobacco among Americans. Tobacco has always been "nationalized" in America, and so have matches. Your pipe is your own, but your tobacco and matches belong to everybody. So it was with food and shelter in the Welsh colony at Sharon. Each newcomer from the Old Country was ent.i.tled to free bed and board until he could get a job in the mills. When he found a job his money was his; we never expected him to pay for the food he had eaten any more than you would expect pay for the tobacco and matches you furnish your friends.

These sojourners in our family were heroes to us kids. They brought us news from the Old World, and each one had tricks or tales that were new to us. One man showed us that we could put our hand on the bottom of a boiling teakettle and find the bottom cool. Another told us about milking goats in the Old Country. We asked him how much milk a goat would give. He said, "About a thimbleful," and we thought him very witty. Another had s.h.i.+pped as an "able seaman" to get his pa.s.sage to America. When out at sea it was discovered he didn't know one rope from another. During a storm he and the mate had a terrible fight. "The sea was sweeping the deck and we were ordered to reef a shroud. I didn't know how, and the mate called me a name that no Welshman will stand for.

I thought we were all going to be drowned anyhow, and I might as well die with my teeth in his neck. So I flew into him and we fought like wildcats. I couldn't kill him and he couldn't kill me. And the sea didn't sweep us overboard. But after that fight the mate let me do as I pleased for the rest of the voyage."

Knowing how strong are the arms of an iron worker and what a burly man is a s.h.i.+p's mate, we realized that the fight must have been a struggle between giants.

We were fluent readers, much better readers than our parents, but we had no books. We took the Youth's Companion, and it was the biggest thing in our lives. Every week we were at the post-office when the Companion was due. We could hardly wait, we were so eager to see what happened next in the "continued" story. Surely so good a children's paper as the Youth's Companion could never be found in any country but America. America was the land of children, and that's why parents broke their old-home ties and made the hard pilgrimage to America; it was for the benefit of their children.

Our home was a happy one, for we children were fond of one another and all loved the father and mother who worked so hard for us. We were the first to realize that our home was insecure, upheld by a single prop, our father's labor. The breaking of his right arm might have broken up our home. We wanted to acquire property so that mother would be safe.

For we knew that G.o.d was a just G.o.d. He did not ordain that one cla.s.s should labor and be insecure while another cla.s.s owned property and was safe. I learned that the banker, the hotel keeper and the station agent had all been poor boys like myself. They started with nothing but their hands to labor with. They had worked hard and saved a part of their wages, and this had given them "a start." The hotel keeper had been a hack driver. He slept in the haymow of a livery stable. He had to meet the train that came at two o'clock in the morning. No other man was willing to have his sleep broken at such an hour. He hated to lose the sleep, but he wanted the money. At the end of four years he had saved a thousand dollars. He wanted to buy a hotel but needed more money. The banker, knowing he was a stayer, lent him the cash he needed, and so he became a property owner. He no longer slept in the haymow but had a room of his own and other rooms to rent to the "high-toned traveling men."

From this I learned that laborers became capitalists when they saved their money. Right then I made up my mind that some day mother would own a home. If father couldn't save the money to buy it, I would. Years afterward a wealthy Pittsburgh man who had just built a fine residence in the fas.h.i.+onable section of that town found himself in difficulties and unable to occupy the house. He offered it to me at a bargain. So I took my parents to this place and told them it was to be theirs. Mother declared that she certainly never dreamed of having a "magnificent home like this." She seemed to be greatly pleased. But now I know that the sparkle in her eyes was for me. Her boy had done all this for his mother. If I had given her a pair of shoes that pinched her feet, she would have worn them smiling for my sake. Father looked out the windows at the neighboring residences. "Who lives there?" he asked. "And who lives yonder?" I told him the great names of his neighbors.

"Son," he said, "you do not wish to lock your parents up in a prison, do you?"

Then he explained: "We do not know these people. We are too old to make new friends. We would never be at ease here, we would be lonely. We like the little home that we bought with our own savings. It has become a part of ourselves; it fits us like the wrinkles on our faces. If we moved here our old friends would never come to see us. This magnificence would scare them away. No, son. We thank you for offering us this house, but it is not for us. We will stay in the little cottage where our old friends will be free to come and light a pipe and chat and drowse away the evening hours that yet remain."

How wise he was! He knew the fitness of things. His simple comforts, his old friends, these he valued more than riches, and the valuation that he put upon them was the right one.

CHAPTER XII. MY HAND TOUCHES IRON

When I was eleven I got a regular job that paid me fifty cents a day. So I quit school just where the Monitor had sunk the Merrimac in the "first fight of the ironclads." Thereafter my life was to be bound up with the iron industry. My job was in a nail factory. I picked the iron splinters from among the good nails that had heads on them. This taught me that many are marred in the making. Those that are born with bad heads must not be used in building a house or the house will fall. In the head of the nail is its power to hold fast. Men are like nails, some have the hold-fast will in their heads. Others have not. They were marred in the making. They must be thrown aside and not used in building the state, or the state will fall.

I put the good nails into kegs, and the headless nails and splinters were sent back to be melted into window weights. Handling sharp nails is hard on the hands. And the big half-dollar that I earned was not unmarred with blood. Every pay-day I took home my entire earnings and gave them to mother. All my brothers did the same. Mother paid the household expenses, bought our clothing and allotted us spending money and money for Sunday-school.

This is a cynical age and I can imagine that I hear somebody snicker when I confess the fondness I had for the Sunday-school. I don't want any one to think I am laying claim to the record of having always been a good little boy; nor that everything I did was wise. No; I confess I did my share of deviltry, that some of my deeds were foolish, and (to use the slang of that time) I often got it in the neck. Once I bantered a big fat boy to a fight. He chased me and I ran and crawled into a place so narrow that I knew he couldn't follow me. I crawled under the floor of a shed that was only about six inches above the ground. Fatty was at least ten inches thick and I thought I was safe. But he didn't try to crawl under the floor after me. He went inside the shed and found that the boards of the floor sank beneath his weight like spring boards. And there that human hippopotamus stood jumping up and down while he mashed me into the mud like a mole under a pile-driver. I had showed that I had "a head on me like a nail" when I crawled under that floor and let Fatty step on me. There is a saying, "You can't keep a good man down." But Fatty kept me down, and so I must admit he was a better man than I was. Some people say you should cheer for the under-dog. But that isn't always fair. The under-dog deserves our sympathy, the upper-dog must be a better dog or he couldn't have put the other dog down. I give three cheers for the winner. Any tribe that adopts the rule of always hissing the winner has found a real way to discourage enterprise.

I owned a part interest in some pigeons with a boy named Jack Thomas.

The pigeons' nests were in Jack's back yard. He told me that my share of the eggs had rotted and his share had hatched, so that my interest in the young pigeons had died out and they were all his now. I was sure it was a quibble and that he was cheating me. It made me mad and I sneaked up to the pigeon loft and put a tiny pin p.r.i.c.k in all the eggs in the nests. This was invisible but it caused the eggs to rot as he said mine had, and I felt that this was only justice. Turn about is fair play.

When Jack's eggs didn't hatch he suspected me, for I had been so foolish as to predict that his eggs wouldn't hatch. And so he was sure I was responsible, although he didn't know how. In fact his mother had seen me enter the barn and had told Jack about it. One day when I went to the pasture to get the hotel keeper's cows, I ran into Jack hunting ground squirrels with his dog. He set his dog chasing the cows and then ran away out of my reach. The dog yelped at the cows heels and they galloped about the pasture in a panic. I shouted to Jack to call off his dog or there would be trouble the next time I met him. But Jack, who was out of reach, shouted encouragement instead. Round and round the cattle raced with that howling dog scaring them into fits. At last the dog tired of the fun and trotted off to join Jack, who was disappearing over the hill. I then tried to round up the cows and get them out of the pasture.

But the brutes were wet with sweat and as wild as deer. I saw that they could not be milked in that condition and felt that Jack's conduct was outrageous. He had not only made trouble for me; he had injured the hotel keeper. There would be no milk that night fit to be used.

I started straight for Jack's home to tell his mother of his lawless act. As I went along, I turned the case over in my mind, and the case grew stronger and stronger all the time. Before I reached Jack's door I had, satisfied myself that his mother would be shocked at the news and would at once cut a big switch to give Jack the licking he deserved.