When Benson came in, however, I could see that he was different. He was only twenty-six. His father had been a river-man, and he himself was born in a "shanty-boat." Owing to his mother's early carelessness he had lost one eye. When he grew up, he left the river and became a teamster, and in good times he made a living. At the time I saw him, however, he had had only one or two days' work a week for four months. The hard times, and the wife, I am sure,—not any natural shiftlessness in the man,—accounted for the desolation of his home. There was something fine in Benson's face, a certain modest look of steadfastness and pride,—the pride of the "family protector." This protector-ship extended even to the remote connections by marriage of the miserable creature who was his wife, for I found that the brakeman's widow, whom he had taken in and cared for after her husband's death, was his wife's sister-in-law. Further questioning revealed that this widow had an old mother who had also been dependent on the earnings of the brakeman.
"And what has become of the mother?" I asked.
"Oh," he said, "she lives here, too. She makes her home with me."
There he sat, this one-eyed teamster, in his barren, rented, three-room castle, and told me in a simple, serious way, as though it were to be expected in good families, that his wife's sister-in-law's mother "made her home with him."
It is not uncommon to find a loyalty like this in relations where one would least expect it. I have quite lost faith in the unkind stepmother of fairy-tale tradition. It is a step-daughter whom Mrs. Frederick, the Swiss woman, is caring for in the midst of her struggle. Three or four times I found a woman utterly uncomforted after the loss of a stepson. There was Conley, for instance, a car inspector who was killed in a wreck. A stepmother had brought him up since he was ten years old, loving him as few mothers love their own sons. And he gave her back a real devotion. When his friends would ask him why he didn't have some fun with his money instead of giving it all to his folks, he used to say,
"Well, fellows, home ain't a boarding house."
It is not unusual to find young men giving up their own prospects, to take up the burden of the family at the sudden death of the father. But the most memorable instance I remember of self-sacrifice on the part of a son was that of James Brennan, a switchman, who was killed on the Baltimore and Ohio in November, 1906. He, too, was only stepson and stepbrother to the family he fathered. Thomas Brennan, an Englishman, had married in the seventies and come to America, where his wife bore him two sons and then died. Soon after, he went back to England and married a sister of his first wife and brought her here to take care of his children. He soon proved worthless as a provider. He lived off and on with his family, but contributed less and less to their support, and finally left them entirely. The second wife was not strong, and after the birth of her last child, became an invalid. The burden of the family thus fell upon the shoulders of the two boys, her nephews and stepsons. They went to work at eleven and twelve. Arthur, the younger, was drowned at eighteen, leaving James, the older son, as the only support.
This young man never deserted his post. During the later years his burden increased. His stepsister made a runaway marriage at eighteen and in two years was deserted by her husband and came home with a child. A feeble old grandmother of eighty-eight came over from England to be taken care of. His stepmother became crippled with rheumatism and lay in bed for two years. In June of the year he was killed, he sent her away to a sanatorium to get well. She had been there for five months, had gained twelve pounds and was doing well when the telegram came to tell her of his death. She came home to face the struggle of life without him,—an aged mother on her hands, a boy of ten, and an in-consequent daughter with a baby,—and she herself an invalid, suffering constantly. One would say that the mere problem of existence would be all absorbing for that woman. Yet, when I found her a year later, it was the emptiness of her life without this son rather than the loss of his income that was her tragedy.
There are all kinds of people everywhere. This is the only final conclusion. It is not easy therefore, to describe the spirit in which the working people meet trouble. They meet it in all the ways there are. But most of those I met, had an "everyday" attitude toward misfortune. This seems to support the opinion many hold, that poor people do not feel their tragedies deeply. But I think it is to be explained rather by the fact that they are too busy to entertain grief, that trouble is too common among them to arouse exclamation, and that they make no show of feeling where there is none. That they know the deepest sorrow, is obvious to one who has seen the loyalties and lasting affections which make up so much of their lives. I found usual in families, a generous affection which could rise to self-sacrifice and devotion in time of trial; and sometimes between two members of a family, a rare love, exclusive and complete, so that the death of one left the other in an empty world.