I had one consolation. It was a letter from L. F. Loree, then general manager of the Pennsylvania lines west of Pittsburg, asking me to go to Pittsburg and see him on a matter of business, the nature of which his letter did not reveal. There had been a previous letter from this gentleman, received in Stettin, Germany, just as I was sailing for St. Petersburg, suggesting a meeting in Pittsburg. This was a number of weeks before my final departure from Germany for the United States. At that particular time I did not give the letter its due attention. Russia seemed still to hold out promises which I thought more attractive than those located in other parts of the world.
On arriving in New York City in 1898, with fifty dollars in my pocket and no more in sight, I naturally bethought myself of the letter received from Mr. Loree. I notified him of my modest home-coming, and said that I would be glad to hear more about the business for me that he had in mind. His reply was to the effect that I should meet him in Pittsburg, and would there learn about the matter which he was minded to take up with me. I spent three days in New York City at the home of a friend. During this time I was "put up" at a certain club by a friend whom I had learned to know through the writing business. At this club I met various editors, writers, and, I suppose, publishers. I was so elated with my sudden elevation into club standing in the writing business in New York City, that I immediately went back from the club to the home of my host, and told him in glee what a fine beginning I had made. Neither he nor his wife seemed to care very much for my sudden rise in the literary world in New York, via the club end of it. I remember that they looked at each other very significantly on my telling them with happiness how I had been so happily received by the writers' craft.
That look made it very pleasant for me to consider other pastures, and the invitation to proceed to Pittsburg was accepted with alacrity. Arriving there, I had a few of my fifty dollars left. But there was no immediate prospect of their remaining in my pocket.
It is not always easy, even though invited to meet him and expecting to meet him, to find the general manager of a railroad. In my case, what happened? I found my man out on the road, seeing to it that certain repairs were made, and that he personally should know that they were made quickly, and that I must wait a while, perhaps two or three hours, perhaps longer. Pittsburg and its gloom did not make any plainer to me, during this waiting spell, what I was in Pittsburg for. I remember that I went to a hotel, and tried to write an article on that poor miserable creature, the Russian workingman. In the course of a few hours I was notified by telegram that I was to proceed to where the repairs were being made, and there make the general manager's acquaintance. I followed out these instructions, and I learned to know a man to whom I am indebted for my start in life at home after those wonderland years in Europe and Asia. I remember that I met my benefactor in a signal tower where he was patiently waiting for confirmation that his instructions had been carried out. I remember how he looked at me. No chief of police has ever "sized me up" the way that general manager did. He looked into my personality as it is not pleasant to have any one's personality looked into, unless he believes that he is doing the right thing. This is only a small incident in our acquaintance, but I have never forgotten it.
Before long the repairs were completed, the required confirmation of instructions delivered was received, and Mr. Loree and I returned to Pittsburg in his car. On the car not a word was said about the business that he had in mind, and I was careful enough not to disturb a man who had probably attended to ten things to my one during that day.
In Pittsburg, after supper at the club, we went to the theater and there saw a light play. Naturally, I could not help guessing about the business that the general manager had in mind for me. The play over, we returned to the club, and there, for the first time, I learned what the gentleman wanted.
As I remember his words now, he said to me: "The tramp trouble in the United States has interested me as a railroad man. I take it that it has interested you temperamentally and, perhaps, as a student of economics.
"It occurred to me, on taking hold of this railroad property as a general manager, that I would see whether I could not help to eliminate the tramp trouble for the railroad as well as for the public. It was not a question in my mind about the possibility of the tramp being as bad a man as some have painted him, nor was it the question of doing the honest but unfortunate and penniless train-rider an injury. The thing I had in mind to do, and have tried to do, was to clear the property intrusted to my hands of that riffraff population which has been infesting American railroads for so many years.
"I feel like this. Taken any way you like it, a railroad in a State is one of its biggest citizens. My position as general manager did not call upon me to exercise the theoretical notion of a railroad's position as a citizen in a State. Nevertheless, I said to myself: 'If I clean up my property as regards this riffraff population I am possibly contributing to the fulfillment of my citizenship.'"
At these words I looked at my possible employer pretty carefully. I have never had any reason to believe that as a citizen he has not struggled to do what, in his mind, seemed to be the right thing. He then and there made an impression upon me which I shall never forget. Mind you, I had just come over to this country. It was my business to find something that would make money for me as soon as possible. Mind you, I had gone to a man who knew and managed thirty thousand men.