“My Dear Brother and Sister—
“You know how difficult it is for me to write, and I am sure you won’t think strange because of not having heard from me before. I often think of you both, and have frequently resolved to write, but have neglected it until days, weeks and months have slipped away. I am in deep trouble now. You know that ten years ago the company set me back to flagman. The wages for such a position are very low; I have been able only to live and keep the family, and have found it impossible to lay by anything. A year ago an accident, a collision, occurred in the yards between a couple of switching freight trains. It was charged to me and I was ‘laid off.’ Perhaps I was to blame. I worked long hours and was very tired. I am getting old, anyway. My eyes, and faculties as well, are getting dim. Since then I have had no work, and have employed my time about the garden and with my poultry, out of which I have made a little.
“But Glen, though only sixteen, had completed school, and had also learned the glassblower’s trade in the factory here, and with my pension and what little I could earn was able to support me and keep the house up in good shape, so I did not feel badly. In my old age I felt I had earned a rest, and Glen, noble boy! was satisfied, and insisted that I should have it. But now, just as he has his trade well learned, and had, as we supposed, the means of gaining a livelihood through life for himself and a way of supporting me in my old age, improved machines were introduced into many of the larger factories, that almost entirely displaced the glassblower and absolutely ruined his trade. They were not put in the factory here, but it was seen that the factory would be unable to compete with the machine-equipped factories, and that they must put them in or close up.
“After the machines began to be used it was evident that half the factories would supply the market. So the big ones all joined together into one big company, or trust, and closed up a number of the factories. The one here went into the big company, and the Board of Directors of the big concern voted it to be one of the factories that would be permanently closed. Lots of the machinery has been moved away, and there is little probability of it ever being operated again. At any rate it has now been closed for three months, and Glen has been unable to find a day’s work of any kind to do, and there is little hope of any here. Glassblowers have been laid off in all the factories that are still running, and those now retained are taken from the force of older employes and there is no chance whatever for a new man now. So Glen will probably never find work again at his trade.
“And the town! You have no idea of the condition here. The glass factory was almost the sole industry. There is not another enterprise of any importance. Two thousand men, who fed ten thousand people, or the whole town, are thrown out of employment at the mandate of a trust, and the whole place is ruined. No western cyclone ever wrought worse havoc, because after one of them has passed the people can go to work and rebuild, but there is nothing here they can do to get even bread to eat.
“The very day it was known the factory would be permanently closed residence property depreciated one-half, and in fact it is scarcely worth anything now, and will not sell at any price. My place, which cost me a lifetime of toil, and for which I paid $2,500 principal and no end of interest, will not sell to-day for $500.
“But the question with the people here is, not how much their property has depreciated in value, but how they are to get work by which to earn a living.
“Glen and I think we want to go West. We would like to go out where you are, and want to know what you think about it. Can we make a living there? We have been thinking if we could get a little patch of ground near some good-sized town we could, by gardening and poultry raising (at which I am becoming expert, by the way), get along and make a living; and Glen is a bright scholar, and I have been thinking that perhaps he could get work of some kind out there.
“I don’t want to be a burden on you, but God knows I will be on the state if things continue as they are. And Glen, he deserves a better fate than the world seems to have allotted him.
“Please let me hear from you soon. With kind regards to sister Jane and yourself,