The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West

by Walter A. Wyckoff

It was an ore-crushing camp I found; I was made most cordially welcome, and given a bed on a pile of blankets in a tent where slept the half dozen men of the crew. They were a hearty, healthy lot of young farmers to all appearances, and I gathered that they had come up from Kansas at the time of the “boom” at Cripple Creek.

A walk of only four or five miles carried me into the camp after breakfast next morning. The first view that I had of it was very striking, I thought, as I looked down upon it from a sudden turn in the road. The settlement lay in the southeastern bend of a basin whose bottom was as flat as the prairie and well turfed. The hills rose quite bare for some distance about it, and their sides looked oddly, as though heavy artillery had been playing upon them, for they were peppered with holes made by prospectors, with loose earth and stones lying about them.

Straggling lines of wooden buildings followed roughly the rude course of a long, dusty street, which ran southward to the mouth of a gulch and then turned abruptly west until it lost itself on the level. Some of these buildings were log-cabins, of much solidity, and others were trim, substantial frame houses, neatly painted; but for the most part they were crude, unpainted shanties, and there were many tents dotting the hillsides, and a few lines of light structures which marked the outlines of prospective streets branching from the main thoroughfare.

The camp itself wore an air of desertion, which was only confirmed when I entered it. There were few persons in the streets, and some of the houses were abandoned. The picture formed a very welcome contrast when I saw a school-mistress step to the door of a long log-cabin, with grass growing thick on its roof, and ring a bell to summon a troop of little children, who came running and shouting from unexpected quarters, dispelling at once the loneliness and quiet of the place.

It was but nine in the morning, and I had the full day in which to look for work. There were very few mines in actual operation in the neighborhood, I found, but I visited all of them, asking for any form of unskilled labor.

I was struck at once with the wide difference in bearing out here, as compared with the East and Middle West, on the part of employers toward workingmen. It did not take long to discover that there were scores, possibly hundreds, about the camp who were out of work, and yet the manner of men to whom I applied for employment was most uniformly courteous, and courteous in the best possible way. Invariably I found myself treated as a fellow-man, and that was a wonderful salve to one’s self-respect. There was no effort at politeness, but simply an instinctive recognition of fellowship.

“Why, no, I ain’t got nothing that I can give you to do now, partner,” a boss would say. “You see it’s like this——,” and then would follow a friendly talk on the general situation, as one man might naturally explain a case to another.

It was all easily intelligible. The camp had enjoyed its “boom” during the last autumn and winter, but especially through the spring. There had been the usual rush of fortune-seekers, with an uncommon preponderance, however, of farmers from Kansas and Nebraska. Some silver had been found, but much more gold-bearing quartz and a little placer deposit. Evidently Cripple Creek is to become a gold-producing centre, but the ore discovered so far is of rather a low grade. Very little of it can be worked at a profit so long as it must meet the great cost of transportation by mule train to the railway at Cañon City, more than thirty miles away. There are two railways now making for the camp; so soon as they have entered the region and reduced greatly the present cost of transportation and other costs attached to mining there, many claims will rise instantly to the position of paying properties which cannot now be worked to any profit whatever. The miners were all sanguine of rich results when once this period of waiting has been tided over.

But in the meantime it was “hard scrapping” for a living. There were golden prospects, but very little immediate work, and the best of prospects makes but an indifferent diet. After a long and tiring round of mines, I went at last, very hungry, in the direction of an ore-crushing outfit, which stood in the bottom of the basin near the camp. Nothing in the way of work was to be had there, but I was fortunate enough to see an old prospector test some placer diggings, deftly washing out a panful of soil, and exhibit the few tiny specks of gold deposit at the last.

Turning back to the camp I began a round of the lodging- and eating-houses and shops, in the hope that some opening might be found. But there was as little demand for help there as I had found about the mines, with the exception of one cheap chop-house, where a notice was exposed advertising for a dishwasher. I applied for the place with high hope of getting it, but the buxom, stolid woman who was in charge, met every advance on my part with an unvarying “No” and with nothing more, and, worsted at last, I was obliged to withdraw.