The Iron Puddler Part 2

He gave me a good strapping, and I went home in rebellion. I told my father. I wanted him to whip the teacher. Father said:

"I know the teacher is a good man. I have known him for years, and he is honest, he is just, he is kind. If he whipped you, you deserved it. You can not see it that way, so I am going to whip you myself."

He gave me a good licking, and, strange to say, it convinced me that he and the teacher were right. They say that the "hand educates the mind,"

and I can here testify that father's hand set my mental processes straight. From that day I never have been lawless in school or out. The shame of my father's disapproval jolted me so that I decided ever after to try to merit his approval.

To-day there is a theory that the child ought never to be restrained.

Solomon said: "Spare the rod and spoil the child." We have no corporal punishment at Mooseheart, but we have discipline. A child must be restrained. Whenever a crop of unrestrained youngsters takes the reins I fear they will make this country one of their much talked of Utopias. It was an unrestricted bunch that made a "Utopia" out of Russia.

Anyhow, my father lived his life according to his simple rules. He is living to-day, a happy man in the cozy home he won, by his own work. The things he taught me I have seen tested in his long life, proved true.

He never expected any gift from life. I thought once to surprise him. I wanted to buy a fine house and give it to him. He wouldn't have it. He stayed in his own little cottage. It was not in his theory of life that a house should come to him as a gift. It was a sound theory, and like a true Welshman, he hangs on to it to the end. He is a good man, and the fruits that his life of labor has brought forth are good fruits.

CHAPTER IV. SHE SINGS TO HER NEST

From my mother I learned to sing. She was always working and always singing. There were six children in the house, and she knitted and sewed and baked and brewed for us all. I used to toddle along at her side when she carried each day the home-made bread and the bottle of small beer for father's dinner at the mill. I wors.h.i.+ped my mother, and wanted to be like her. And that's why I went in for singing. I have sung more songs in my life than did Caruso. But my voice isn't quite up to his! So my singing has brought me no returns other than great chunks of personal satisfaction. The satisfaction was not shared by my hearers, and so I have quit. But my heart still sings, and always will. And this I owe to my mother.

I can see her yet in our tiny Welsh cottage, her foot on a wooden cradle rocking a baby, my baby brother, her hands busy with her knitting, her voice lifted in jubilant song for hours at a time. And all her songs were songs of praise.

She thanked G.o.d for life and for strong hands to labor for her little ones. In those days furniture was rare, and few were the pieces in a worker's home. It took a dozen years for her to acquire two feather beds. And when at last we owned two bedsteads, we rated ourselves pretty rich. We boys slept five in a bed. Why were bedsteads in those days harder to get than automobiles are to-day? Because the wooden age still lingered, the age of hand work. And it took so long to make a bed by hand that people came into the world faster than beds. But within my lifetime the iron mills have made possible the dollar bedstead. The working man can fill his house with beds bought with the wage he earns in half a week. This, I suppose, is one of the "curses of capitalism."

I have heard how "the rights of small peoples" have been destroyed by capitalism; and if the right to sleep five in a bed was prized by the little folks, this privilege has certainly been taken away from them.

At the Mooseheart School we are pinched for sleeping room for our fast-growing attendance. I suggested that, for the time being, we might double deck the beds like the berths in a sleeping car. "No," cried the superintendent. "Not in this age do we permit the crowding of children in their sleeping quarters." So this is the slavery that capitalism has driven us to; we are forced to give our children more comforts than we had ourselves. When I was sleeping five in a bed with my brothers, there was one long bolster for five hot little faces. The bolster got feverish and a boy sang out: "Raise up." We lifted our tired heads. "Turn over."

Two boys turned the bolster. "Lie down." And we put our faces on the cool side and went to sleep.

Those were not hards.h.i.+ps, and life was sweet, and we awoke from our crowded bed, like birds in a nest awakened by their mother's morning song. For, as I have said, my mother was always singing. Her voice was our consolation and delight.

One of the most charming recollections of my boyhood is that of my mother standing at our gate with a lamp in her hands, sending one boy out in the early morning darkness, to his work, and at the same time welcoming another boy home. My brother was on the day s.h.i.+ft and I on the night, which meant that he left home as I was leaving the mills, about half past two in the morning. On dark nights--and they were all dark at that hour--my mother, thinking my little brother afraid, would go with him to the gate and, holding an old-fas.h.i.+oned lamp high in her hands, would sing some Welsh song while he trudged out toward the mills and until he got within the radius of the glare from the stacks as they.

belched forth the furnace flames. And as he pa.s.sed from the light of the old oil burner into the greater light from the mills, I walked wearily out from that reflection and was guided home by my mother's lamp and song on her lips.

Happy is the race that sings, and the Welsh are singers. After the tiring labor in the mills we still had joy that found its voice in song.

When I was six years old I joined a singing society. The whole land of Wales echoes with the folk songs of a people who sing because they must.

The memory of my mother singing, has made my whole life sweet. When blue days came for me, and hards.h.i.+p almost forced me to despair, I turned my thoughts to her, singing as she rocked a cradle, and from her spirit my own heart took hope again. I think the reason I have never cared for drink is this: the ease from mental pain that other men have sought in alcohol, I always found in song.

CHAPTER V. THE LOST FEATHER BED

I didn't care very much for day school. The whipping that I got there rather dulled the flavor of it for me. But I was a prize pupil at Sunday-school. Father had gone to America and had saved enough money to send for the family. I asked my mother if there were Sunday-schools in America, but she did not know. In those days we knew little about lands that lay so far away.

My boy chums told me we were going to Pennsylvania to fight Indians.

This cheered me up. Fighting Indians would be as much fun as going to Sunday-school. A trip to America for such a purpose was a sensible move.

But when mother exploded the Indian theory and said we were going to work in a rolling mill, I decided that it was a foolish venture.

This shows how much my judgment was worth. I thought it foolish to go to America merely to better our condition. But I thought it a wise move to go there and kill Indians to better the living conditions of the Americans. I know grown men to-day with the same kind of judgment. They are unwilling to do the simple things that will save their own scalps; but they are glad to go fight imaginary Indians who they believe are scalping the human race. "Capitalism" is one of these imaginary Indians.

And Lenin and Trotsky are the boy Indian-fighters of the world. These poor children are willing to go to any country to help kill the Indian of capitalism. Meanwhile their own people are the poorest in the world, but they do nothing to better their condition. Such men have minds that never grew up.

When our household was dissolving and we were packing our baggage for America, I tried to break up the plan by hiding under the bed. Mother took the feather ticks off the two bedsteads and bundled them up to take to America. Then she reached under the bedstead and pulled me out by the heels. She sold the bedsteads to a neighbor. And so our household ended in Wales and we were on our way to establish a new one in a far country.

As I said before, the feather beds were mother's measure of wealth.

Before she was married she had begun saving for her first feather bed.

It had taken a long time to acquire these two tickfuls of downy goose feathers. The bed is the foundation of the household. It is there that the babies are born. There sleep restores the weary toiler that he may rise and toil anew. And there at last when work is done, the old folks fall into a sleep that never ends.

We traveled steerage to Castle Garden. Having pa.s.sed the immigrant tests, we found ourselves set out on the dock, free to go where we pleased. But our baggage had disappeared. Some one had made off with our precious feather beds!

This was the first real tragedy of my mother's life. All the joy of setting foot in the new land was turned to dismay. The stored-up pleasure with which she awaited the greeting of her husband was dashed in a moment, like sweet water flung upon the ground. When I saw the anguish in my mother's face, I was sobered to life's responsibilities.

The song had died out of her heart, and I must make it sing again. While she was crying in distraction, I wrapped my own tearful face in her skirts and prayed to G.o.d that I might grow up in a day--that He would make my arms strong so I could go to work at once earning money to replace the lost feather beds. I was then not quite eight years old. It was early in April, 1881. Before the month was out I had found a job in the new country and was earning money. I gave all my earnings to my mother. I have been earning money ever since. As long as I lived at home I turned over all my wages to my mother. When I went away I sent her weekly a percentage of my earnings. This I have ever continued to do.

My love for my mother and her grief at the loss of the feather beds turned a careless boy into a serious money-maker. This led to the study of economics and finance. A man's destiny is often made by trifles light as feathers.

CHAPTER VI. HUNTING FOR LOST CHILDREN

The loss of our baggage was only the beginning of our troubles in New York. With the feather ticks went also the money mother had got from selling the bedsteads and other furniture. She had nothing with which to buy food and while we were walking the streets we smelt the delicious odor of food from the restaurants and became whining and petulant. This was the first time mother had ever heard her children crying for bread when she had none to give them. The experience was trying, but her stout heart faced it calmly. In the Old World, her folks and father's folks had been rated as prosperous people. They always had good food in the larder and meat on Sunday, which was more than many had. They were the owners of feather beds, while many never slept on anything but straw.

True they could not raise the pa.s.sage money to America until father came and earned it--that would have been riches in Wales. Now we were in America hungry and penniless, and hard was the bed that we should lie on.

From Pittsburgh father had sent us railroad tickets, and these tickets were waiting for us at the railroad office. All we would have to do would be to hold our hunger in check until we should reach Hubbard, Ohio, where a kinsman had established a home. But while mother was piloting her family to the depot, two of the children got lost. She had reached Castle Garden with six children and her household goods. Now her goods were gone and only four of the children remained. My sister was ten and I was eight; we were the oldest. The baby, one year old, and the next, a toddler of three, mother had carried in her arms. But two boys, Walter and David, four and six years old, had got lost in the traffic.

Mother took the rest of us to a hotel and locked us in a room while she went out to search for the missing ones. For two days she tramped the streets visiting police stations and making inquiry everywhere. At night she would return to us and report that she had found no trace of little Walter and David. To try to picture the misery of those scenes is beyond me. I can only say that the experience instilled in me a lasting terror.

The fear of being parted from my parents and from my brothers and sisters, then implanted in my soul, has borne its fruit in after-life.

Finally mother found the boys in a rescue home for lost children.

Brother David, curly-haired and red-cheeked, had so appealed to the policeman who found them that he had made application to adopt the boy and was about to take him to his own home.

After finding the children, mother stood on Broadway and, gazing at the fine buildings and the good clothes that all cla.s.ses wore in America, she felt her heart swell with hope. And she said aloud: "This is the place for my boys."

Every one had treated her with kindness. A fellow countryman had lent her money to pay the hotel bill, telling her she could pay it back after she had joined her husband. And so we had pa.s.sed through the gateway of the New World as thousands of other poor families had done. And our temporary hards.h.i.+ps had been no greater than most immigrants encountered in those days.

I later learned from a Bohemian of the trials his mother met with on her first days in New York. He told me that she and her three children, the smallest a babe in arms, tramped the streets of New York for days looking in vain for some one who could speak their native tongue. They slept at night in doorways, and by day wandered timid and terrified through the streets.

"At last a saloon-keeper saw that we were famis.h.i.+ng," the Bohemian told me. "He was a--a--Oh, what do you call them in your language? I can think of the Bohemian word but not the English."

"What was he like?" I asked to help find the word. "Red-headed? Tall?

Fat?"

"No; he was one of those people who usually run clothing stores and are always having a 'SALE.'"

"Jew," I said.

"Yes, he was a Jew saloon-keeper. He took pity on us and took us into his saloon and gave us beer, bread and sausages. We were so nearly starved that we ate too much and our stomachs threw it up. The saloon-keeper sent word to the Humane Society, and they came and put us on the train for Chicago, where our father was waiting for us."

The Bohemians saved from starvation by the pity of a Jewish saloon-keeper is a sample of how our world was running fifty years ago.

Who can doubt that we have a better world to-day? And the thing that has made it better is the thing that Jew exhibited, human sympathy.