"Broke," The Man Without the Dime

by Edwin A. Brown

“I wouldn’t use those blankets. A sick man occupied them last.”

“What was the matter with him?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but he was pretty sick.” Finally choosing a pair of blankets which had the appearance of being a degree more wholesome than the others (and with at least a clean reputation), we laid down. In a short time, we discovered the place was literally alive with night prowlers, which drove us all out under the trees. This was preferable as long as it continued dry and warm, but at two A. M. a rain storm forced us back into the shack.

The next day I put in ten long hours picking berries. When I checked up I had earned just 50 cents—just enough to pay my store bill and buy another meager day’s rations. I tried the cherries, the raspberries and the gooseberries, but could do no better. I discovered that the pickers, no matter how clever they might be, did not, or could not, average over fifty cents a day, which, if they had spent it all for food, would only have been sufficient to purchase about two-thirds as much as they would have eaten if they had had enough. For other farm work the pay was one dollar, or one and a quarter dollars per day without board. With a few exceptions board was given with the one dollar. It was extremely difficult to get other farm work in berry picking season. However, I myself was offered by an old farmer one dollar a day and board, to hoe corn.

The next day was Sunday. Could I work on Sunday? Being good Irish church people, they had been taught to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. The old gentleman hesitated slightly but yielded finally when I told him I needed the money. Then, too, I was in much better company working by myself in the field than sitting around the village. He would see what the old lady would say about it.

The old lady had been suffering with the toothache for the past two days and had tried everything from ice down her back to boiling water, when an old woman driving by suggested filling the cavity of the tooth with fine-cut tobacco. This she declared to be a never-failing cure. The old lady tried it, but had swallowed the tobacco, and no mortal, she declared, ever before passed through such a sickness and survived! Consequently life just then seemed very uncertain, and this caused, on her part, a deep reflection on the subject of being very good. But finally she thought it would be all right for me to hoe on the Sabbath day, providing I did my hoeing down in the woodlot, instead of in the open field on the hill.

It was pitiful to see these workers, after a hard day’s work, walk several miles to the village store with their few cents to buy their suppers, knowing that they must walk back before they could cook and eat it. Even though a man were not a drunkard, do you wonder that he would spend a portion of that day’s pitiful wage for stimulant to create enough force to get back to his camp? All of the country merchants had coffee, tea and sugar done up in five-cent packages ready to hand out. They had many customers for such quantities.

One day, during my short investigation among these, a man was found dead in a barn, where he had crawled to rest. Was it any wonder? He had in his possession only a few cents and a little package of groceries. Is it any marvel that another man was found dead, hanging in an orchard, or that another was killed by an automobile, in the darkness of the night? Seventy-five per cent of these workers were old men or men beyond middle life. They were men of all sorts of trades, as well as the unskilled. A great many were physically infirm, which disabled them from following either their own trade or the more arduous work of the common laborer.

I heard during the time I was among these toilers, the wish expressed many times by them that they, too, could own a garden tract, a bit of land that they could cultivate, a place, however humble, that they could call home. No; men do not, as many will tell you, seek the open fields to be evil, but to shun evil.

There exists to-day in many of the villages, towns and cities of New York, the rule to grant to the police, marshal, or constable, as a perquisite to his office, money for every arrest he makes. In Milton I was told by one of its citizens that the fee was one dollar. Consequently they are on the lookout for poor, unfortunate workingmen. When they find one he is thrown into a dark hole of their city jail or lockup. In one of these villages, this wretched place of detention was partially filled with water when the men were put in. No matter how prosperous the aspect of his farm, the farmer will tell you of the vicissitudes he must continually encounter before his crop is gathered and sold, that many of the farms are carrying a heavy mortgage with an excessive rate of interest which they can not pay off, but can only succeed in living and paying the usury,—that he is at the mercy of the middle man (the commission man) and, above all else, what a time he has with his help, so hard to get, so unreliable when he does get it. If this is all true, do you wonder at it? Why, the horse, the cow and the hogs on these farms are better treated than their help! The animal must be well fed, housed comfortably and kept in good health to be profitable. If these farmers would institute some kind of a recall which would rid them of the code of ethics now practiced among them, or which would force them to practice brotherly love, kindness and justice; if they would create a new religion that will abolish the death-dealing, demoralizing, destructive influences which exist among them now; if they will cease being thoughtless; if they will begin to think,—then the weather will have lost much of its terror. The mortgage will be more easily raised. The faults of the commission man may be overcome and the unpleasant specter of quantity and quality of help will vanish. Labor is the corner-stone to the foundation of the edifice of prosperity. It is left to the farmer to make his way easy, his burden light.