“I have nothing for you to do. You are very welcome. We are always glad to help a tired man. No one is ever turned away from the door of old Colonel Chandler’s.” Then, in response to a question of mine, he replied, “No; Ma, there, is the Christian side of the house. With me it is just a spiritual law, I guess.”
I caught a train of empty flat stone cars. Lying prone on one of these I rode five miles. We stopped. It was the terminal for that train, and a stopping place for all trains. I waited. In a short time another freight pulled in. From an empty box car came a familiar voice, “Hello!”
I sought the voice and found it was my pal, the carpenter, who had not succeeded in going his way and so had decided to come mine. He was famished from hunger. The lunch from Colonel Chandler’s was already needed to raise a man from the dust. “The time of need” had come. The night was upon us, and we were yet twenty-two miles from Paducah. We were suffering intensely from the cold, and while we waited for a relief train we built a fire by the track. No sooner had we done so than from out of the darkness somewhere we were joined by three other destitute men, bound our way.
Immediately a train came in sight. It was made up mostly of oil tanks and the only possible way to ride, except on the rods and brake beams, was to lie flat down under one of the huge oil tanks and hang on. But it had rained somewhere and the rain had frozen as it fell. The train was covered with ice. The three other men took the advantage offered, regardless of all danger, but my pal and I, both novices, had not the courage, and as one of the men swung on, cognizant of our fear, he called out,
“Oh, come on. You can’t beat a train and be an old woman.”
I began to realize the physical courage necessary in the make-up and character of the man obliged to work and wander, to beat a railroad, braving dangers which from 1901 to 1905, inclusive, killed twenty-three thousand, nine hundred trespassers, and injured twenty-five thousand, two hundred and thirty-six, and each year shows no decrease. In this wonderful example of physical courage in these migratory workers, worthy of our deepest concern, we cannot help but catch the spirit of a greater courage in other workingmen—of one who freed four million slaves; of one who, nearly two thousand years ago, dared to enter the temple and cast out the thieves and the money-changers.
We had not long to wait. A moment later my companion and I were hidden in a box car of a following train. After an hour’s ride in the darkness, we found ourselves seeking in a strange city (Paducah, Kentucky), a place of rest. As we passed through the yards we saw a policeman striking matches or throwing bulls’ eyes into empty cars, looking for such men as we were.
Riding a Standard Oil Car