Charities and the Commons: The Pittsburgh Survey, Part I. The People

by Various

With so many misfortunes the Learys have not been able to save anything. Four times Andy tried to join the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, but each time after his papers were made out and he had paid down his dollar, and the day had come to join, he couldn't get together the necessary nine dollars for the first payment. With all this, there is an unfailing humor and philosophy in the Leary household which is irresistible.

Among railroad men generally there is a certain laughing, soldier spirit. It is part of the faith; no true "railroader" is without it. Perhaps this spirit leans to recklessness with some of the younger ones, but I believe it is just as essential to the running of a railroad as is the executive skill of the Hills and Harrimans. This spirit stands by the men in danger and makes them meet death bravely. It stands often a harder test; you will not break the spirit of a railroader by cutting off his arm or giving him a wooden leg. Out of fifteen railroad men I visited, who had received permanent injuries, all but four have gone back to the road. Two of the four are totally unable to do work of any kind. Another has gone home for a few weeks until he can "get used to his wooden leg," when he will be ready for any job the road will give him. The other, a twenty-year-old boy who lost his right arm at the shoulder, has learned to write with his left hand and is studying telegraphy as hard as he can, in order to stick by the railroad.

Of the eleven who are back on the road, nine were able to go into the same work and pay, but two had to take lower jobs on account of partial disability. This meant in each case five or six dollars a week less, but neither man complained; he took it as part of the day's work. What the railroader dreads is having to quit the road altogether. A watchman's job will be accepted with a good deal of cheer. Notice the spirit of the one-legged watchman at your crossing, who is very likely a man dropped from an active, exciting occupation at eighty dollars a month to flagging a crossing for forty. He is still in the game. But try to retire a railroader on a pension while he is able to work, and you will break his heart.

To a large extent, the railroaders' wives reflect this spirit. They are quite resigned to the risks and dangers of the "mister's" trade. But with the mothers, especially those whose husbands have followed more quiet callings, it is different. They lead an anxious life.

In every dangerous occupation there is not this sustaining common courage to help a man endure gaily a lifelong deprivation. A certain degree of independence and fraternity in a group is necessary to bring it about. Many go forth from the steel mills maimed for life, who have no such spirit to uphold them. I remember one night in Homestead seeing a boy on crutches, with one leg gone. He was about nineteen, with blue eyes and a shock of yellow hair falling down low on his forehead. In his face was that desperate look of defiance which comes with a recent deformity. He was trying with all his young will to be indifferent to the stares of the crowd, while in every nerve he felt them. All this and a weary hopelessness were written in his sullen child-face.

I have shown how grief is crowded out of the lives of working people, and how their frequent experience of trouble gives them an ordinary manner in speaking of it. These things largely account for the opinion held by many, that working people do not feel their sorrows as keenly as others do.

Furthermore, I found among working people almost no pretence of feeling where none exists. This too, might give rise to such an opinion. Where the death of a husband has meant merely a loss of income, with the attending problems of struggle and adjustment, there is no effort to have it appear otherwise. Where it has aroused only a feeling of bitterness toward the employer, this is not concealed either. But where the death of the bread-winner, has meant not merely an economic problem, not merely a legal battle, but heartache and emptiness,—that is written, real and unmistakable, in the faces of those left. And in the case of sons, where there may be no question of income, it is often possible to tell in the first glance at the mother whether this boy who was killed was "one of her children," or the child of her heart. There is an outspoken genuineness about these people which allows them neither to make a show of grief where there is none, nor to hide real suffering, even from a stranger.

Mrs. Leary took the accidents of "Andy" lightly. If he should happen to be killed some day her heart would not be broken. She spoke of the death of her baby three months before without feeling, mentioning the doctor's bills. But when I asked her to tell me about her oldest boy who died two years ago of diphtheria, I could see at once that I was on different ground. Her eyes filled with tears, and there was grief and longing in her voice as she talked about him. You see he was only five, but they understood each other. When she was unhappy he knew it. He would climb up in her lap, she said, and put his arms around her neck and say, "Don't cry, Mommy; I love you."

Mrs. Burns, a pretty Irish widow, whose husband was crushed while coupling cars, is obviously well satisfied with the $4,000 insurance he left. She takes boarders and is carefully saving the insurance money for her little girl's education. Her affections are set on this child. She has a tender memory of her Tom as he started off to work whistling that last morning, but she makes no pretence to mourn for him. She frankly admits that her marriage was not successful enough to make her risk it again.

Thus it is with Mrs. Andrews, a woman whose husband was killed in the mill. I found her smiling and contented a year later. Her man had been good and faithful while he lived, but after he died, her brother came to live with her and help her raise her two boys. He earned just as much, and she was perfectly satisfied with the situation.