A Yankee in the Far East

by George Hoyt Allen

If a protest and a petition for an effort to try and make things better, signed by a goodly number of us from the underworld who were American citizens, were sent up to the captain, it might mend matters, and wouldn't I draft it?

After my encounter with that purser—the purser standing high in the management of a passenger ship at sea—I had a fear that any petition we might make wouldn't be received with favor by the management, but my election for the job was so unanimous, spontaneous and hearty that I buckled to it and wrote a petition, in which I told the management what we American steerage passengers thought of what was being handed to us on our passage home. I told them we were steerage passengers not from choice, but owing to the fortunes of war, and instead of trying to emphasize the fact that we were steerage passengers, wouldn't they see what they could do to make us forget it? Furthermore, I asked in the petition if they wouldn't at least see that the stewards who served us our food put on clean clothes: that the white suits they wore were filthy when we left Liverpool, and that they were still wearing the same filthy suits. And also wouldn't they see that the dishes were given an occasional bath—that the knives and forks they were handing us turned our stomachs. And couldn't we have ice water to drink? Even had the temerity to suggest that they give us napkins—qualified the suggestion of napkins by telling them paper ones would be counted a boon.

I read my petition to the crowd and it was loudly acclaimed a choice bit of literature, right to the point, and exactly fitted the case; and they crowded around to sign it, and wanted me to get it into the captain's hands as quick as I could. I went up to first cabin to hunt for the captain and ran into the purser. When he saw me coming he looked even more aggrieved than when he told me to stay where I belonged. But I told him this time I came with a petition, signed by several hundred American citizens, and that I wanted to give it to the captain.

"We're in a fog now and captain is on the bridge; I'll give your petition to him when he comes off the bridge," the purser said.

"All right, purser," I said; "and you needn't return the petition to me. I've got a copy of it and a copy of all the names of the signers." And I went back to steerage, from choice now. I fear that I've always set too great a store on ease and luxury—asceticism has never appealed to me as a personal practice; but it would have taken a roll of money to have hired me to shake steerage now. My better nature, or something, had triumphed, and my lot was cast with that down-trodden, forsaken, and hopeless crowd of steerage travelers. A revulsion of feeling for first-class on that ship had filled my soul. They couldn't have hired me to travel first-class now. When I got back "amongst my own people" I was the recipient of so many tales of woe—I was so filled up with steerage passengers' grievances, that if my interior had been analyzed it would have looked just like the bureau for the amelioration of troubles at San Francisco after the earthquake.

Shake that bunch? Nay, nay. In my contrition of spirit I concluded that what I was getting was just retribution for ever trying to do such a thing; and I feared if I should let go and make another attempt to do it, something worse might come to me—although I couldn't figure out just what it could be. Besides, after that petition reached the throne, I'd be in bad with the ship's management, and another attempt to get away from steerage would be futile.

My-o! but that was a forlorn lot of passengers traveling steerage.

Our chief aversion was "Beef," chief steward of steerage (he was dubbed "Beef" by the sufferers an hour after we got aboard). He was big, beefy, brass-buttoned and shoulder-strapped, evidently hired by the line for his ability to drive over-worked stewards and handle immigrant passengers.

Almost immediately after boarding the ship he had earned the indignation of the Americans by insulting one of our country-women, a woman of refinement and culture, who was traveling alone—the wife of a banker. When she protested at the deplorable condition of the dishes, he stormed up to her and asked her what was wrong. "Why," she said, "you don't expect us to eat our meals off such dirty dishes, do you?"

"You're no better than immigrants, and you'll be handled as such," "Beef" said. And when she told him she would report him to the captain he bellowed out most insultingly: "Go ahead and report; we aren't afraid."