This does not apply in all cases, however. A few years ago I took a trip from St. Paul to St. Louis on one of the boats of the Diamond Jo Line. There was a bar on the boat, but it seemed to depend for its patronage upon the colored deck crew. They were pretty constant patrons, although their drinking was systematically regulated. A side window, opening out upon the boiler deck promenade, was devoted to the deck traffic. If a rouster wanted a drink he must apply to one of the mates, who issued a brass check, good for a glass of whiskey, which the deck hand presented at the bar, and got his drink. When pay day came, the barkeeper in his turn presented his bundle of checks and took in the cash. How many checks were issued to each man on the trip from St. Louis to St. Paul and return, I do not know; but it is safe to say that the sum total was not permitted to exceed the amount of wages due the rouster. Some of the "niggers" probably had coming to them more checks than cash, at the close of the voyage. The regulation was effective in preventing excess, which would demoralize the men and render them less valuable in "humping" freight.
The bartender always poured out the whiskey for the "coons", and for the latter it was not a big drink. It was, likewise, not a good drink for a white man, being a pretty tough article of made-up stuff, that would burn a hole in a sheet-iron stove. If it had been less fiery the rousters would have thought they were being cheated.
While on this trip, I never saw an officer of the boat take a drink at the bar, or anywhere else, and but few of the passengers patronized it. It accentuated as much as any other one thing the fact that the "good old times" on the river were gone, and that a higher civilization had arisen. But peddling cheap whiskey to "niggers"! What would an old-time bartender have thought of that? The bare insinuation would have thrown him into a fit. But we are all on an equality now, black and white—before the bar.
Winona, Minnesota. The Levee in 1862.
Chapter XVIII
Gamblers and Gambling
Volumes have been written, first and last, on the subject of gambling on the Mississippi. In them a small fraction of truth is diluted with a deal of fiction. The scene is invariably laid upon a steamboat on the lower Mississippi. The infatuated planter, who always does duty as the plucked goose, invariably stakes his faithful body servant, or a beautiful quadroon girl, against the gambler's pile of gold, and as invariably loses his stake. Possibly that may occasionally have happened on the lower river in ante-bellum days. I never travelled the lower river, and cannot therefore speak from actual observation.
On the upper river, in early times, there were no nabobs travelling with body servants and pretty quadroons. Most of the travellers had broad belts around their waists, filled with good honest twenty-dollar gold pieces. It was these belts which the professional gamblers sought to lighten. Occasionally they did strike a fool who thought he knew more about cards than the man who made the game, and who would, after a generous baiting with mixed drinks, "set in" and try his fortune. There was, of course, but one result—the belt was lightened, more or less, according to the temper and judgment of the victim.