Another striking instance of the pressure of work in poor people's lives was in the family of Harry Nelson. They lived on the South Side, near the Jones and Laughlin Steel Works, where the father and two grown sons and Harry, who was nineteen, were employed. Two younger boys were in school. One Sunday night, on the way home after his twelve hours' work, Harry said to his father that he'd "give a lot" not to go back to the mill that night. (There was another twelve hours' work to come before he could sleep, for this was Harry's "double shift.") He didn't tell his mother he was tired, because he knew she would beg him not to go back to work. Harry was ambitious; he was an electrician's helper, getting fifteen dollars a week, and he did not want to lose his job. At 7:30 he was back in the mill, and at 8:00 he was up on an electric crane, making some repairs. When he was through he started along the narrow run-way of the crane to a place where he could climb down. The air was full of steam; some say that he was blinded by this; others, that he must have been a little dizzy. At any rate, to steady himself, he reached for an electric wire that was strung along there. He happened to touch a part that was not insulated, got a slight shock, and fell thirty-five feet to the floor of the mill.
After Harry was killed, the two older boys left the mill and looked for work in another city. But the father had no choice; he was too old to find new work. His fifteen a week was all the more indispensable now because Harry had given all his money to his mother, and the two older boys had paid generously for board. In three days the father was back in his old place at the cold saw, within sight of the place where Harry fell.
Thus work may be a cruelty as well as a blessing. But in any case it leaves the workers little time to dwell upon their misfortunes. When they do speak of them, it is almost always in a "matter-of-course" way. This is not, I think, because they lack feeling, but because they are so used to trouble that the thought of it has ceased to rouse them.
That poor people are used to trouble is a commonplace. I mean by "trouble," the less subtle disappointments of life, those which come with disease, injury and premature death. Of all these rougher blows of fortune, the poor family gets more than an even share. This stands to reason, if experience has not already convinced one of it. To the ordinary causes of sickness,—unsanitary dwellings, overcrowding, undue exposure, overwork, lack of necessary vacation, work under poisonous conditions,—to all these poor people are much more constantly exposed than others. To injury and death caused by accident they are also more exposed. Poor people's children play in dangerous places, on the street, near railroad tracks. The poor man's dwelling is not often fire-proof. Poor people do most of the hazardous work in the world, and the accidents connected with work form the majority of all accidents.
Moreover, the poor family is, in a material way, less able to meet these disasters when they come, than the well-to-do family. This is in some degree due to ignorance, for ignorance, whether as cause or result, almost always goes with poverty. In a very large degree, however, it is due to poverty itself. It is because they have no reserve fund to fall back on in emergencies. Suppose a young steel worker with a family gets a long, sharp chip of steel in his eye. He cannot go to the best specialist, to the man who knows all that anybody knows about saving eyes. Through ignorance or lack of interest on the part of the doctor who treats him, he loses his eye. Thus an injury which might mean but a few weeks of fearful anxiety to a well-to-do man, may result in lasting misery to a poor man. In the same way, too, what might often be in a well-to-do family a short struggle with disease, crowned with success, is more likely to be in a poor family an unrelieved tragedy.
Thus are the poor, by reason of their very poverty, not only more open to attack from these bodily foes, but also, and again by reason of their poverty, less equipped to fight and conquer them. "St. George killed the dragon; St. George wore the finest armor of his day and his sword was tested steel."
With these workers whom I met,—poor people, not as the charity visitor knows them, but poor, as the rank and file of wage earners are poor,—misfortune is almost part of the regular course of things. They are used to hard knocks, if not yet in their own lives, then in the lives of their relatives, friends, and neighbors. Consequently, there is often in their attitude toward trouble a certain matter-of-fact calmness, which looks like indifference. Thus, I have had a mother tell me about her sixteen-year-old son's losing two fingers in the mill. She couldn't remember exactly how or when it happened; she thought he had lost only a week's work; and she had no comment upon it but that it might have been worse. An old steel worker whom I questioned about his injuries answered, "I never got hurt any to speak of." After persistent inquiry, however, he recalled that he had once fractured his skull, that a few years later he had lost half of a finger, and that only three years ago he was laid up for nine weeks with a crushed foot. Troubles like these are the common lot; they are not treasured up and remembered against fate.
Often I have found in young women a surprisingly "middle-aged" way of looking at trouble. I remember, for instance, Mrs. Coleman, whose husband was a freight conductor. They had been married nine years, and had made out pretty well up to the last two years, although the wife, as she somewhat proudly explained, had had three children, two miscarriages, and an operation, during this time. On Christmas night, 1903, Coleman had his arm crushed in a railroad accident. He was disabled for three months, and went back to work with a partially crippled arm. Three weeks later, as he was numbering cars, an iron bar rolled off the load and broke his nose. This laid him up again for five weeks, and left his face permanently disfigured. He has been troubled ever since with nose-bleeding, so that he has to lay off every little while, and the doctor says he must have an operation before he can be cured. Since this second injury, a fourth child has come. When I saw her, Mrs. Coleman was just recovering from a bad attack of grip, which had increased their expenses. To help along in this hard luck time they took two railroad men to lodge and board in their three room flat; one of these men had been killed on the road the week before I called. Here are troubles enough, and yet this young woman had no special complaint against fortune.
"Yes," she said, as she rose to open the door for me, the last baby dangling over one arm,—"we've had a bad time these last two years, and now with him only working two or three days a week, I guess it'll be worse. But then,"—with a smile, "what can you do about it?"
On the same day I talked with a much older woman. She was too worn out to smile at her troubles, but she had the same "everyday" attitude toward them. Ten months ago they had been doing well. Her husband was earning ten dollars a week at odd jobs; two sons, twenty and seventeen, were getting fifteen dollars a week each as lead buffers in a coffin works; she and her daughter kept house and did a little sewing; and they all lived happily together. Then one day her husband was brought home with a smashed foot and a leg broken in two places, as a result of a bad fall. He had been on a ladder, painting, when the cornice gave way and he jumped to save himself. For five months they kept him at the hospital free of charge, and for four months more he went back on crutches for treatment. Finally they told him to come back for an operation, but on the day after the operation they sent him away again with a bill of three dollars for the time he had been there. His wife had to help him home, and he was in bed when I called. The doctor had said it would be better for him to stay at the hospital, but the superintendent decided that they could not treat him in the ward for nothing any longer. The wife laughed a little grimly when she told me this.