HD 8081 .A5 D5 1913 Dimock, Leila Allen. Comrades from other lands I COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS Interdenominational Home Mission Study Course Each Volume nrao, cloth, 50c. net (post. 7c.) ; paper, 30c. net (post. 5c.) Under Our Flag By Alice M. Guernsey The Call of the Waters By Katharine R. Crowell From Darkness to Light By Mary Helm Conservation of National Ideals A Symposium Mormonism , The Islam of America By Bruce Kinney , D.D. The New America By Mary Clark Barnes and Dr. L. C. Barnes Supplementary America , God's Melting-Pot By Laura Gerould Craig Paper, net 25c. (post. 4c.) JUNIOR COURSE Cloth, net 40c. (post. 5c.) ; paper, net 25c. (post. 4c.) Best Things in America By Katharine R. Crowell So7ne Immigrant Neighbours By John R. Henry , D.D. Paper, net 25c. (post 4c.) Comrades from Other Lands By Leila Allen Dimock oys at Work in a Coal Breaker Issued under the direction of the Council of Women for Home Missions COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS What They Are Doing for Us and What We Are Doing for Them By ✓ LEILA ALLEN DIMOCK k ~ c New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh Copyright, 1913, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY, New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 125 N. Wabash Ave. Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street “ Let us welcome, then, the strangers, Hail them as our friends and brothers, And the heart’s right hand of friendship Give them when they come to see us. Gitche Manito, the Mighty, Said this to me in my vision. “ I beheld, too, in that vision All the secrets of the future, Of the distant days that shall be:. I beheld the westward marches Of the unknown, crowded nations. All the land was full of people, Restless, struggling, toiling, striving, Speaking many tongues, yet feeling But one heart-beat in their bosoms. In the woodlands rang their axes, Smoked their towns in all the valleys, Over all the lakes and rivers Rushed their great canoes of thunder.” —The Song of Hiawatha. CONTENTS I. Hard Coal and Breaker Boys II. Soft Coal and Coke Ovens III. In the Open Country IV. Gardeners and Fruit-Growers V. In the Construction Camp VI. Children in Canneries VII. With the Lumber-jacks . ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Boys at Work in a Coal Breaker. Frontispiece Uncle Sam’s Canary Bird.. 23 How Uncle Sam Cares for the Canary Birds. 23 Some Comrades from Other Lands—Group Slavic Children Anthracite Region. 33 A Camp School.. 50 A Railroad Construction Camp. 53 A Mother’s Class at Valhalla Camp School_ 53 Log Driving.. 70 1 I HARD COAL AND BREAKER BOYS Scouts know neither a higher nor a lower class, for a scout is one who is comrade to all, and who is ready to share what he has with others .—Boy Scout Handbook. H OW lovely were the valleys of eastern Pennsyl¬ vania, in the days of Indian wigwams! The stately forests were a green mantle on the hill¬ sides. The rushing streams were clear and alive with fish, the fields were well watered and fertile, the corn waved softly in the sunlight. Instead of the refreshing green of nature, a black pall now hangs over the picture. The hills have been robbed of their forests and stand bare, rough and grim. The mountain brooks, no longer restrained by the woodland, become torrents after every storm, rushing madly to the rivers below, carrying destruction instead of blessing. No fish can live in them, for the waters are foul with poison and clogged with grimy dust. Here and there loom the “culm heaps,” huge hills, black and irregular, refuse from coal. In place of the picturesque Indian wigwams there are towering buildings, the “ breakers,” black and forbidding as the dismal mounds of culm. There are “ patches ” of miners’ shanties, black as all the dreary scene. From a hole in the ground pour forth men and boys with stooping shoulders, and on them also has the shadow fallen, for their faces are as grimy as the homes they ii 12 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS seek. What made this sorry change ? These valleys have been made black that our homes may be warm and bright! The coal mine makes a dreary scene, but without the coal it yields our city homes would be cheerless indeed. The fires that warm us, the lights that gladden us, are made possible by the darkness and toil of the coal mine. IN THE COAL MINE Most of our anthracite, or hard, coal comes from the valleys of eastern Pennsylvania. Shall we go down into that black hole and see for ourselves the work of those men with blackened faces ? As we wait our turn to enter the “ cage,” or rude elevator, we note the great wheel, about fifteen feet across, constantly whirling, day and night, to send fresh air underground. It cannot send enough to keep the air sweet and wholesome, but it makes life possible. The black hole is ten feet across, and the deep shaft, lined with heavy timber, stretches down, down, down, into the blackness. The cage rapidly drops seven hundred feet, stops with a jerk, and we get out at the center of fifty miles of tunnels; north, east, south and west, stretch passageways, each three miles long, dimly lighted with tiny electric bulbs. Through each avenue, or “ intake,” extends a track with tiny cars, drawn by mules. Cross streets intersect the main “ in¬ take ” every hundred feet, and opening from the cross streets are “ rooms ” about ten by twenty feet. Usually there are two miners working in each room. Sometimes, not able to stand upright, they work on their knees, their only light coming from the tiny lamps in their caps. They begin the day by carefully looking over the room. Swinging their picks they undercut the wall of coal, so that it may be scaled off in huge chunks by HARD COAL AND BREAKER BOYS 13 blows from above. Often they drill holes toward the lower edge of the coal vein, fill them with explosives, light fuses and then retreat to the gangway for safety until after the explosion. When the room has been cleared of smoke and poisonous gases by the exhaust fans on the surface, they return. If it has been a good “ shot,” two or three tons of coal have been loosened, which will be loaded on cars and carried to the mouth of the shaft. In few occupations is there such terrible risk, such hor¬ rible loss of life. A blast may break a thin wall that holds back an imprisoned flood, and without a moment’s warning the angry torrent may drown the helpless men. A “ cave-in ” from above may engulf them. Poisonous gases may suffocate, and explosions rend them. Within ten years 30,000 miners have been killed in our country. In these dark scenes of peril there often flashes the light of heroic deeds. One night as a number of men were at work in one of these mines a huge slab of coal suddenly leaped from its place, with a terrific roar, and water engulfed the room. The force of the flood put out the lights and terror raged in utter darkness. The crest of the incoming wave struck the cars on the track and shot them along the passageway; the workmen jumped for the cars, and clinging to them desperately, were carried with the flood to the shaft, up which they escaped. With anxious eyes they took instant count of their number—two men were missing! When the break took place, a laborer, called “ Old Joe,” had been working in the farthest part of the room. The old man was neither quick nor strong,—he could not flee with lightning haste, he could not wrestle with such a death,—must he perish alone while younger men escaped? The end seemed very near, but a brave heart was nearer. Young John Slovak leaped to Old Joe’s 14 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS side in the darkness, and fighting to keep their heads above the rising water he dragged and carried him to a passageway which led upward to temporary safety. The water soon shut them in and there they were hidden for over two days and nights. The miners who had escaped gave the alarm and pumps and siphons were put to work to lower the water. At the end of fifty-six hours a rescue party was able to enter the mine. With anxious hearts they groped their way, fearful lest they were too late. But when their lights penetrated the room, weak voices answered their call. The men still lived! John had saved Old Joe. john Slovak’s people There are thousands and thousands of them. Where do they come from and why do they take such terrible risks to get coal? In the heart of Hungary, among the plains of the Danube, the masterful Magyars live, sur¬ rounded on all sides by the Slavs. The Slavic family numbers more than twenty millions in eastern and south¬ ern Europe. They are sturdy people, ready for the hardest tasks. In their homeland they could earn only fifty cents by a long day of hard labor; their food was of the plainest and meat was a luxury. The pay of a miner in America—about two dollars a day—is a prize they cannot resist. They endure hardships without com¬ plaint. Although rough in their ways, given to fighting and drinking, observing Sunday as a holiday, yet they have in them the making of splendid Americans, if we will only be good neighbors and teach them. The Slavs live on a pittance in order to save money to send for wives and children. Many of them buy homes and try to live as Americans. HARD COAL AND BREAKER BOYS 15 THE BREAKER BOYS But what are the Slavic boys doing while the men are working in the mines ? Alas, many of the boys are father¬ less, for the perils of the mine have claimed their toll. A little company of twenty-five boys in one mining town, all under fourteen years of age, were all fatherless, and all were “ breaker boys ” and supported their families. After the coal comes from the mines it must be crushed and passed over screens to grade it in size. It is mixed with slate and refuse, and it is the task of the “ breaker boys ” to pick out this slate and refuse from the coal as it rushes down the towering breakers, through the chutes over which they crouch. Their work is exceed¬ ingly hard and dangerous, and severe accidents are common. Listen to the words of a man who has tried it: “ I once stood in a breaker a half-hour and tried to do the work a twelve-year-old boy was doing day after day, ten hours at a stretch, for sixty cents a day. Outside, the sun shone brightly; within there were blackness and clouds of deadly dust. The harsh, grinding roar of the machinery and the ceaseless rushing of coal through the chutes filled the ears. I tried to pick out the pieces of slate from the hurrying stream of coal, often missing them; my hands were bruised and cut in a few minutes; I was covered with coal dust from head to foot, and for many hours afterward my throat was filled with particles I had swallowed. I could not do that work and live, yet there were boys of ten and twelve doing it for fifty or sixty cents a day/’ These boys should be in school, learning to become in¬ telligent Americans, they should play outdoors to gain 16 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS strong bodies, they should have friends to help them become good men. According to the laws of Pennsylvania, boys of four¬ teen may be employed in breakers, and of sixteen in the mines. Philanthropists are urging laws forbidding all mine labor under the age of sixteen. But even the existing laws are not enforced. In 1909 there were 1,197 boys under sixteen years of age employed in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. Warm-hearted men and women are helping these boys. In one city a “ Boys’ Industrial Association ” has done much for the breaker boys and right proud are they of their “ B. I. A.,” as one of their songs testifies: i “ We’re coming, City Fathers, we are now six hundred strong, The time is swiftly passing and it won’t be very long Till we shall be the voters and we’ll veto all the wrong, For we’re the B. I. A. “ We believe in honest labor, we believe in honest pay, We’ll arbitrate our troubles in a fair and manly way. We’ll govern by the Golden Rule, when we shall have the say. For we’re the B. I. A. “ So we’re coming, City Fathers, we are now six hundred strong, We can’t yet make the politics but we can make a song, And here we’ll sing a cheery one to help the world along, For we’re the B. I. A.” Don’t you think they will make good Americans if their songs have that ring? Sing it yourself to the tune of HARD COAL AND BREAKER BOYS 17 “ The Battle Hymn of the Republic ” and I think you will be willing to welcome as comrades the boys who sing it, though they come to us from other lands. For twenty years the B. I. A. has had clubs and classes and fun for its members. One of their number died for his country and ours in the Spanish war, one became a minister, one a rabbi, several have won college honors, and many, many more have become good workmen, “ doing a day’s work without graft ” as one of them expressed it. NEIGHBORLY HELPERS The sisters of the “ breaker boys ” need our friend¬ ship too. Many of them are employed in silk mills, walking several miles to reach the mill before the seven- o’clock whistle blows, working all day long in the whir and dust of the machinery, and returning at night to cheerless homes. Wherever a missionary comes bringing a heart warm with love to God and man, life grows brighter. Such men and women help these foreign comrades in many ways. They go into the homes as trained nurses and friends and teach the mothers how to care for their little ones and how to cook American food. They gather the tots into kindergartens where they bask in love and sunshine. They have clubs where the boys learn basketry and the girls learn sewing and home-making, to work and play and think, and to do all happy, clubable things. They gather the young people into classes, where they learn English, how to get the vote and how to use it wisely. They show the young folks how to have good times that are safe and happy, away from the saloons that make for trouble. And through all this service of love, 18 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS they lead to an acquaintance with the Man Christ Jesus, the Friend whose love inspires every neighborly deed. It seems a far cry from the grime of the breaker and the rough Slavic home to the purity of King Arthur and Sir Galahad, yet among the breaker boys is more than one “ Table Round ” where the boys thus pledge themselves, “ We be joined heart and hand to achieve Christian knightliness; what harmeth body, defileth tongue, or doeth ill to mind cometh not to our conclave.” It is a strange setting for chivalry, yet where else have so many boys, while yet children, assumed the knightly support of the weak,—the mother and little ones of the home,—and among what class of boys is there a more fearless facing of danger? II SOFT COAL AND COKE OVENS Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou wert our conscript on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred.— Carlyle. H OW could we travel over sea and land without steel steamers, steel rails, steel cars, steel auto¬ mobiles ? How could we get our food from the soil without steel harvesters, or our clothing without steel machinery in the mills ? Could our homes be built with¬ out steel tools, our sewing be done without steel needles ? Could our skyscraper office buildings be erected without steel frames, or business be transacted in them without typewriters? Travel, food, clothing, homes, business— steel, steel, steel! Where does it all come from? How do we get this steel on which so much depends ? The iron ore is dug from the ground, the steel is made from the iron by means of overpowering heat. The heat is produced by burning soft, or bituminous, coal, together with the coke that is made from it. Most of this coal is mined in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Who mine the bituminous coal, who tend the coke ovens and the terrible fires that change the iron to steel? These tasks are so hazardous that the men crippled and killed every year number hundreds and thousands. Who perform these perilous tasks on which our comforts de¬ pend? Again we must look at the map of Europe and find those powerful Slavs with the strong backs, the 19 20 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS strong arms, the grim indifference to danger. The Mag¬ yars are also employed in this industry. They are of a different race, dominating their neighbors and ruling Hungary. They insist that their Slovak subjects shall use the Magyar tongue in Parliament, in court, in school. The Slovaks resent this and bitter feeling and feuds result. We depend largely on foreigners for the very neces¬ saries of life, and the heads of our great industries become seriously alarmed when they are attracted else¬ where. In May, 1912, a labor famine was threatened in the Pittsburgh district, as over 100,000 laborers had left in four years. Some had gone to South America, where better opportunities offered. Some had returned' home, where wages have improved and the cost of living is always lower. HOW ARE WE TREATING THESE COMRADES? We must have this exhausting and terrible work done f or us,—how are we treating the workers? Are we doing everything possible to safeguard their lives in peril? Are we teaching these strong, intelligent men how to become good citizens? Do we help them to have com¬ fort in their homes after their bitter toil? Are the children having a happy American time ? Are we show¬ ing them the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? We have been so careless in the mines that many thousands of children have been orphaned. In one dis¬ aster alone, 356 men were killed. And little children share the toil and peril. In the bituminous mines of West Virginia little boys of nine or ten are frequently employed. One little fellow of ten was employed as “ trap boy.” He had to sit alone in the dark mine pas- SOFT COAL AND COKE OVENS 21 sage, hour after hour, with no soul near. He could see no creature, except the mules as they passed through the door with their loads, or a rat or two, trying to share his meal. He must stand in water or mud covering his ankles, chilled to the marrow by the cold draughts that rushed in as he opened the trap door for the mules to pass through. Thus he worked for fourteen hours a day, waiting, opening, shutting, then waiting again,— for sixty cents a day. It was often dark when he reached the surface and he sometimes fell to the earth, exhausted, and had to be carried to a shack to be revived before he could walk home! In West Virginia there is no restriction as to the em¬ ployment of children in dangerous occupations, except that no boy under fourteen and no girl of any age, may be employed in a coal mine. But even this law is not enforced. One terrible disaster was caused, it is said, by the employment of children. TWO HUNDRED BONFIRES You like to watch a bonfire at night. Have you ever seen ten, twenty, or fifty burning at once? Imagine the weird sight when two hundred hive-shaped coke ovens in which coke is made are seen burning, night after night, and on the horizon the flame and smoke from a dozen other coke plants. The soft coal that is burned in these ovens makes smoke full of soot that clings to every sur¬ face. How would you like to have your home close to those smoking ovens, and that home two or three rooms in one of a long row of square, ugly houses that were red before the soot made all things black? What have we done to teach these toilers how to be¬ come American citizens ? There is no provision for 22 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS teaching grown people in the public schools; we do not help them there. When politicians want their votes they buy them. A bad beginning, isn’t it, for making a good citizen out of an indispensable laborer ? “ But the boys and girls,” you say, “ at least they are learning to become good Americans in our fine public schools, which weld all peoples into one. But that privilege is not for many of them, as they are massed by hundreds into church, or parochial schools, conducted by foreign priests, Greek or Roman Catholic. In these they hear little English, and receive few American ideas. Their homes are without back yards, or gardens, and as for water, it all has to be carried from a hydrant, one hydrant for every four houses. Who wouldn’t slight his bathing on a freezing winter day? It isn’t easy for anybody to keep clean where soft coal is burned,—and only think of the condition of miners and coke burners, for, as has been said, “ Mining is not a tidy job.” Surely we have not dealt fairly with the toilers with the brawny backs,—the men who dig the coal that makes the coke that makes the steel upon which depend our food, our clothes, our tools, our buildings, our means of travel by land or sea. And the babies, how have they fared in the square, red- black houses ? On a hillside near a coking town there is a cemetery where, side by side, lie the graves of two hundred babies, tiny soldiers who have fallen in the battle for life. We might see there a mother stooping to lay wild flowers on a little grave. These mothers love their children, but they do not yet know how to care for them in crowded America, where life is so different from what it was in their village homes across the sea. They need neighborly missionaries, such as we found in the anthracite region, who will show them how to feed their Uncle Sam’s Canary Birds How Uncle Sam Cares for the Canary Birds SOFT COAL AND COKE OVENS 23 children and how to make happy homes. And better things are at hand; the day of unselfish service is dawn¬ ing for these dark places. UNCLE SAM’s CANARY BIRD Uncle Sam has become appalled at the loss of life in mining. He says, “ These miners are men, if they are foreigners, and we must safeguard them! ” And so in 1910 our government established the Bureau of Mines. And what do you suppose is most useful as a life-saver ? The canary bird! “ Do you think twelve strong men need a canary bird for protection? ” asked a leader of a rescue gang. Very often they do. After every mine explosion there is likely to be poisonous gas diffused in the air. It has no odor. “ All I knew was my knees gave out and I fell,” said one miner who was saved by his companions. The canary bird is affected much sooner than a man, and when he becomes restless, or drops from his perch, it is time to seek fresh air. Mr. John A. Mosby, Jr., a good friend of the birds as well as of the children, says: “ The various miners’ squads carry the birds in cages as seen in photograph No. 1, and, when in dangerous sections of the mine, keep a wary eye upon them. “Though the little bird is thus subjected to insensi¬ bility, it must not be thought that any cruelty whatso¬ ever is practiced upon it. The effect of the gas, beyond rendering it insensible, is, as far as can be found from experiment upon men, not only painless but leaves no ill effects if the insensible one is restored within a short time. “ Accordingly, the miners are provided with an air¬ tight oxygen cage, as shown in the lower photograph. In the handle, as seen grasped by the miner on the left- 24 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS hand in the picture, is a tank of compressed oxygen. As soon as the little bird falls insensible in his own cage, he is at once transferred to this oxygen cage and the life- giving gas turned in from the tank in the handle by means of a valve. It is said that the miners, when warned by the little bird that they have but five minutes before they themselves will fall insensible, never fail to stop and carefully put their feathered guardian into his oxygen cage, grateful for the warning, without which their own lives would be lost.” In less than two years the Bureau has put seven rescue cars into the principal coal regions of the country, and has opened six rescue stations. It has the names of 7,900 miners who have taken the first aid and mine rescue training, and has persuaded several coal com¬ panies to adopt rescue methods. A great mine safety demonstration was held at the Pittsburgh station, at¬ tended by the President of the United States, and thou¬ sands of operators, foremen and owners in September, 1911. Thirty thousand miners were there to represent the thirty thousand killed in the last ten years. Who could forget such an object lesson? The companies which own these industries are also waking up. “ These toilers are human beings,” they say; “ we must make life pleasanter for them.” And so the old, red-black company houses are giving place with one company, at least, to smaller houses, with fences and gardens. The company plows and fertilizes the gardens and offers prizes for the best. How eagerly the for¬ eigners work at their bits of ground! One community has clean streets and even a playground and a swimming pool. And the people of our Protestant churches are begin¬ ning to think of these comrades. They are opening SOFT COAL AND COKE OVENS 25 Sunday-schools and training the young people for Chris¬ tian work. COMRADES, INDEED \ One forward step in neighborliness is most interesting. We used to wait to preach to foreigners until they knew our language, and we thought little of preparation for that service. But now we find that to be really helpful to a Slav, or an Italian, or a Magyar, we must know him in his old home, and be acquainted with his life and try to think his thoughts. And so in 1909, a company of young college men who expected to help the foreigners in this country, through the Young Men’s Christian As¬ sociation, were taken abroad for a year by Professor Steiner, that interesting immigrant and friend of immi¬ grants, and made to know the home life of the men they were to help. The principal of a missionary-training school for girls in the coke district spent three months in Bohemia, that she might better be prepared to teach Slavonic girls how to serve their people. In 1912 a Home Mission board sent two young men to prepare to work among Bohemians and Slovaks in America by spending a year and a half in their home lands. A third has gone to Italy and now others are following to live among the Magyars and Croatians. There they are to stay in the peasant villages, to live their life, to get into the closest, simplest touch with them, learning their lan¬ guage and their ways, that when those comrades seek this land of ours, they may be met with an understanding heart. These young men were honor students and en¬ titled to a year’s study in the best universities of Europe, but they chose to follow in the footsteps of Him “ who though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor.” And so the light leads on. Ill IN THE OPEN COUNTRY You may make bricks, cut down trees, or hammer iron without love, but you cannot deal with men without it.— Tolstoi. T HE crying need of our land to-day is for more farmers, for better farming. Our big country has millions of people that must be fed. If they all crowd into cities, who will grow the wheat, the corn, the apples and potatoes? And so Uncle Sam has put his mind to the subject and the Department of Agriculture at Washington, and various state colleges and experiment stations are giving the finest brains of the country to help the farmers. Many students, instead of worrying over Greek and Latin “ roots,” are digging into the roots of corn and beans, preparing to teach how to make things grow. Hundreds of American boys and girls are learning how to raise a hundred or more bushels of corn where their fathers could get but twenty-five. It is more fun than algebra and will feed more folks. Of the millions of foreigners who seek a home under our flag, the great majority huddle in our cities, in quar¬ ters already crowded to the danger point. Wise men and women are trying to guide them to the fields, and those who seek the country of their own choice are the most warmly welcomed of all who come to our shores. Of these the Bohemians form a large proportion. Holland¬ ers, Swedes, Finns, Germans, Norwegians and Danes are also farmers. 26 IN THE OPEN COUNTRY 27 WHO ARE THE BOHEMIANS? On the map of Europe you will find the northwestern part of Austria called “ Bohemia.” It is now over one hundred and seventy-five years since the little kingdom became subject to Austria. The people are strong to work, strong to fight, strong to endure. They have good minds to think out their problems, they love freedom, they love their families. And the hero of this country is a man who joyfully gave his life as a martyr for the church of Jesus Christ. That was almost five hundred years ago. The sentence of death was passed upon John Huss, and after the fagots were piled about him he was asked to recant, but his last words were,—“ In the truth of that gospel which hitherto I have written, taught and preached, I now joyfully die! ” It was about the year 1850 that the first Bohemians entered this country, and they came because their free¬ dom-loving hearts could not endure the tyranny to which they were subjected. Many of them were men of culture and refinement, who were willing to live humbly if only they might be in a land of freedom. One of these went to Texas where he was found by a former neighbor. “ Why, Valentine! ” his friend exclaimed, “ at home your pigs were housed better than you are here! ” “ That is true,” was the sturdy reply, “ but I would rather live in a log house here than in a palace under the Austrian government! ” His son became an editor, judge and member of the school committee. These early settlers went also to Wisconsin, and as land advanced in value they moved on to Minnesota, to Iowa, to Kansas and Nebraska, to South Dakota. They' are also now going to California, to Washington and Oregon. 28 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS They have opened up our wilderness. They have beautiful farms and orchards where fifty years ago there was a heavy timbered forest. Americans had given it up, saying it could not be cleared in a hundred years. Another community, forty years ago, took possession of land that was almost useless, low prairie, wet and cold. They have drained it with thousands of feet of tiling underground and now they cultivate their fertile farms. Shall we let one of these early pioneers tell her own story of thrilling experience as it was told in The Chau - tauquanf LIVING IN A DUGOUT “ I was a little girl when we came to America. My father was a poor man, but a neighbor who wished to come to America offered to pay the traveling expenses of our family if my father would act as interpreter, as he could speak German. We traveled as far as a Bo¬ hemian settlement in Wisconsin and there our neighbor decided that he could shift for himself, and left us. We sat there on the dock by the lake-side, my father, my mother, my little brother and myself, without one cent among us. Well, we got on some way.—After two years a party of us started for Nebraska; we had a yoke of oxen and a good little Indian pony. The women and children slept in the wagon and the men under it. Going uphill father would fasten the pony ahead of the oxen to help them up. “ In those days men either built their houses of sods piled up high on the prairie, or else made dugouts on the side of a river. We made quite a nice dugout. It was tall enough to stand up straight in, and the earth sides were whitewashed, but for some time we had no door, having nothing to make one of. In those days IN THE OPEN COUNTRY 29 when you were driving across the prairie in the dark you had to be careful not to break through into people’s dugouts. “ One winter, I think it was that first year, father went to Beatrice, about twenty miles away, with the oxen. We had one big fall of snow before he started, but soon after another big storm came and he was kept away a week. Mother was almost wild when he did not come back. She went to a neighbor to get him to go look for father, but then father got back. He brought nothing with him, but he was glad to get back at all. The oxen had refused to face the storm (they never will) and had turned around and broken everything. He left the things in care of a man twelve miles off. Mother decided to go back with him to fetch what was left, leaving me home alone. Another storm came up and they could not get back for four days. I was only nine years old. After a time I had eaten all the bread and burned all the wood. I had sense enough to make my way to the river and follow up on the ice to a neighbor’s. A woman came back with me and chopped wood for me. Then father and mother got home. They had expected to return right away, but it had been impossible. “ In the spring, when all that snow came off at once and rain came besides, it made a flood. The land was under water for miles. Everybody had to move out, up on a hill. The mills could not grind and there was not enough to eat. “ In those days Indians used often to come through; they were Omahas and Pawnees and they used to visit one another by turns. Sometimes there would be five hundred in a party. They went in single file, five or ten paces apart, at a sort of little trot. It was the govern¬ ment’s order that to avoid trouble they were not to go 30 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS in a bunch. They would gather, however, to camp. They would be two or three days going through. Some traveled on foot, but the squaws were mostly on ponies, with crossed sticks trailing behind, with the children and goods loaded in the middle. “ Often when you would least expect it, you would suddenly find a big Indian standing beside you. Shivers went right through a person. They had a regular snaky walk, they would come up and ask for a little flour, or want to swap something, but they never bothered. They were all right if they were treated right. “ I g re w up a very strong girl. Once I was plowing with a girl, but she was not used to oxen and said ‘ Gee ’ when she should have said ‘ Haw/ and they broke and ran. Two separate times I was bitten by rattlesnakes; there was no doctor and we did what we could. It was about a week before I could put my foot to the ground. After my marriage I had leisure and read much in Eng¬ lish and Bohemian.” UP-TO-DATE FARMERS In this way have the sturdy Bohemians opened up our wildernesses. “ It was the hard work of strong men, helpful women and obedient children/’ says a Bohemian pastor, “ that accomplished such results.” An American agent of a Bohemian farming paper says that the Bo¬ hemians farm better than the Americans, and invest in the best machinery; that in one-half of Butler County, Nebraska, there are seventeen big threshing outfits owned by Bohemians, and that there is nothing parallel to this in all the United States. The Bohemian farmers are teachers of the farmers of other nationalities. They are trusted as honest men by business men of nearby towns. IN THE OPEN COUNTRY 3 i In Bohemia only two per cent, of the people are Protestants, the others are Roman Catholics. In our northwest about this proportion holds true, but in Texas about twenty per cent, are Protestants. The Protestants have clung to their religion in a remarkable way, when we consider how they have been scattered on our frontier with no pastor to feed them—“ sheep without a shep¬ herd.” They kept up family prayers, they met at one another’s houses, they had their Bibles and hymnals. About thirty years ago there were several dry years, a most trying season for Dakota farmers. There was not a drop of rain for four or five months, and then very little. Most of the settlers went forth to a new country, but a little company of Bohemian Protestants remained. And how did they employ those trying months? They said, “ There is little work this year, there will be no harvest, no corn shucking, no plowing for the ground is too dry—we will build a church! ” And so they did. Three years later they built a parsonage. Many little Bohemian communities waited fifteen years before they heard the gospel preached in their own lan¬ guage, and ten more before they had a pastor. Now all Bohemian Protestants are leagued together. But how they long for more pastors! Where nine were called for in 1912, only one could be found to respond. In every community the Protestant Christians lead in every good enterprise; they work for better schools, better roads, better politics,—for better people,—each little church is a blessing to the whole community. All the family attends church, the babies with their mothers. “ When they are about nine months old,” writes a pastor, “ their voices are sometimes heard, but they soon learn it is good manners to keep quiet in church.” 32 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS A WELCOME FROM WASHINGTON Our government at Washington most heartily desires that foreigners coming to America shall go forth into the country and cultivate the land. The different states eagerly seek farm laborers to buy and cultivate their farm lands. In November, 1911, that Department of our government which cares for the immigrant, summoned to Washington men from every state to consider the ques¬ tion. These delegates frankly agreed that all their states needed the help of foreigners to develop their lands, and they owned that they had not done their part in welcoming them in a neighborly way. An official in this Department said, “ It is our duty to take them by the hand and show them what we have got, and show them quick. To every man who comes here we promise—‘ life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness/ Do we mean it?” He believes that in every state there should be an office where the immigrant may learn just what opportunities there are for him, what crops he can raise, what the land costs, and obtain other helpful information. “We should have a man ready to explain, who can speak their language—I have found in my dealings with immigrants that the man who can talk to them in their language wins their confidence. I do not think it is fair to turn millions of people into the streets of our large cities. We are responsible if we permit the shark to rob them. We do want now to reach out and take these resident aliens by the hand, let them know they are wel¬ come, and let them know where they can best do for themselves.” Isn’t that good, straight, brotherly talk? So pleased were the delegates with the opportunity to talk over all sides of the immigrant and labor question as it affected Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, Texas * Some Comrades from Other Lands Group Slavic Children, Anthracite Region Courtesy Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sunday School Work IN THE OPEN COUNTRY 33 and every other state, that they voted to meet every year, “ The National Conference of Immigration, Land and Labor Officials.” They will do all in their power to induce foreigners to go into farming, and they will en¬ deavor in a brotherly way to protect all immigrants from injustice, and to teach them how to become good Amer¬ ican citizens. This conference marks a forward step in our govern¬ ment, for hitherto the most it has done has been to pass laws restricting the classes of immigrants who may enter our country. TRAVELING IN A GOSPEL WAGON Through these farm settlements from Dakota to Texas travels the Sunday-school missionary, the “ colporteur,” or messenger of the “ Word.” He may travel in a “ Gos¬ pel wagon,” calling from house to house, talking and praying with the people and leaving them something in their own language to read and think of. He perhaps carries a stereopticon with views of the life of Christ and when these are exhibited, the people throng to see them. A picture is the same in every language! Ofter the messenger is a man of their own race, and then how welcome is the sound of the mother-tongue! One such writes: “ I called at a farm; the man was out at work in the fields, only the wife and children were at home. I read to her from Luke. She called her husband ,—‘ Father, come home, here is a man who speaks Slavish and sells Bibles,—only come see him! ’ When I greeted him in his own language he smiled, and when I had read to him he said,—‘ Mother, I want this book: give the treasure for it; and have you something to eat, because I think the gentleman is hungry; it is late/ ” 34 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS One Bohemian weekly religious paper, Krestanske Listy (The Christian Journal), circulates 3,000 copies weekly. A Bohemian colporteur writes: “ Before I sell a Bible I explain its great value, and that every Christian should possess it. I pray to the Father that He will give me strength that I may find mercy before Him and this people.” CHILDREN IN THE COTTON FIELDS In Texas many Bohemians are employed in the cotton fields. One-fifth of all the cotton in the world is grown in Texas. The crop of that state for one year would make a suit of clothes for every person in the world. But how old do you suppose some of the cotton pickers are? We must improve matters there. A professor in Columbia University, who is deeply interested in all children, heard an owner of Texas cotton fields tell of the wonderful opportunities of Texas for the foreigner. He says, “ The man’s income, I found, depends on the number of children he has. ‘ How soon do the children begin to work ? ’ I asked. “ ‘ At six and younger,’ he replied promptly. ‘ I recall one boy of six who earned fifty cents a day, the season through.’ “ I asked about school. He answered, ‘It is a pretty rough country; school is kept when there is nothing to do in the fields.’ “ { And what is the effect on the health and growth of the child ? ’ A thoughtful look came into his face,—I honestly believe he had never thought of it before,—and he said, ‘ Of course it destroys their vitality.’ ” Is that the way we should treat small boys and girls who come to America,—keeping them at work that makes IN THE OPEN COUNTRY 35 them weak and making their minds dull by toil? Their fathers are doing for us the work most necessary for the welfare of our land. Should not Americans see to it that their children receive the rights and privileges of American boys and girls ? IV GARDENERS AND FRUIT-GROWERS The final and chief test of a scout is the doing of a good turn to somebody every day, quietly and without boasting. This is the proof of the scout. It is practical religion, and a boy honors God best when he helps others most .—Boy Scout Hand¬ book. O NCE upon a time there was a boy. He came to this country from Denmark, an orphan and friendless. His father had been killed in a war with Germany. He had grown up with bitter feelings against the Germans. And this is his story, just as he tells it himself: AN ANGEL WITH A FRECKLED FACE “ I made up my mind to go to America. Probably some day I would gather up an army of the fiercest In¬ dians, march them against Berlin and tell them to throw stones at the shins of the German Emperor. “ I happened to ‘ light 5 in an Illinois corn field. I had expected Uncle Sam to hand me a saber, or a gun, and here he handed me a hoe! The man I worked for hired * green foreigners/ as he called them, because he could get them for less money. I tried to do my best, but I was sick with malaria and homesick, I wished I might die. Yet I learned a little by asking questions of the small boys in the family; the larger boys made fun of me. 36 GARDENERS AND FRUIT-GROWERS 37 “ But a better day came. An angel walked across the road to me one day while I was hoeing in the corn field, an angel with a freckled face, wearing an old straw hat, and barefooted, with one pants leg rolled up higher than the other. That was the neighbor’s boy. He began to talk to me about our country and about our old king and his family, and we managed to understand each other quite well. He was different from the big boys down at our house. He could nearly always guess what I was trying to say; then he would help me out without laughing at me. So after that day I often looked across the road for the neighbor’s boy, and when one day he asked me if I would like to work for his father the next summer, I felt almost like hugging him! '‘We were looked upon as foreigners. That word ‘ foreigner ’ used to sound terrible to me. I had come here in hopes of becoming an American and here I was, a ‘ foreigner.’ When I was paid off in the fall I went up to Springfield to get an education. I had sixty dollars and thought I might have the best.” (This Danish boy who wanted to become an American could not find a place where he could work his way. He wandered about week after week, friendless and homeless. Little by little his money slipped away, and he became very unhappy in the dirt and poverty of the place where he had to stay.) “ At night when I repeated the Lord’s prayer, I fancied I could see our cottage at home, with the roses on the roof. I wondered if Aunt and Uncle up in heaven could see me. One morning I counted my money and found I had enough for only two weeks more. I made up my mind to go back to the country. Everything was yet 38 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS covered with snow. It was too early to begin farm work and I feared they might not want a farm hand then; but the thought of that boy gave me courage. I would go talk it over with him, and he might be able to help me. “ My friend had seen me coming up the road and was at the door to meet me! The family welcomed me, they took me into their home; I could help them do chores for my board until work began and then work for wages! “ In this home there were a piano, papers, magazines and good books. Soon I learned to read English fairly well. The father explained to me the American govern¬ ment. The mother had flowers, just as my aunt had had, and she would tell me their English names. Three years I spent with these friends, attending district school in the winter, learning new things every day. I was happy because I had found a home and a country and was no longer called an ignorant foreigner. My life was made broad and bright, just because an American boy stepped across the road and talked to me about my king and my country.” * WANTED—A FRIENDLY HAND What do you think of that story? I know how it makes me feel. I would rather be that farm boy, and know that I had helped a homesick stranger become a happy American, than to have all the degrees of D.D. or M.D. or LL.D. that a university could give! And it gives us the secret of the problem about foreigners and farming. Every state in the Union, as we found in the last chapter, is crying for farmers. Why do not * Courtesy of The Chautauquan. GARDENERS AND FRUIT-GROWERS 39 more foreigners seek the open country? They need a friendly hand! Put yourself in their place. Suppose you should arrive in Germany, strong and ready to work, but poor, and knowing no word of German. In the city are many of your countrymen, they can get you work in a factory. Side by side with them, you need speak little German. Living with them you are not so homesick. To get out into the country takes much money for car fare, you cannot work for a farmer unless you can understand orders,—and so many words are needed to explain the many tasks of farming! You cannot buy land without money, you can earn much more in the city than as a farm hand,—what would you be likely to do ? And there is another reason—our western farms are so terribly lonely! Farm life is different in Europe, where the little homes are clustered in a village around the church, the school, the playground. There is the daily chat with neighbors, there are holiday processions and pageants, merry makings and festivals. To be sure, the farmer has to tramp several miles a day, back and forth from his fields, but that is all in the day’s work. Imagine the feelings of such sociable folk when their farms are" miles apart, such as are those of the Bohemian pioneers! PILGRIM FATHERS BY WAY OF ELLIS ISLAND Probably that is one reason the Poles prefer New Eng¬ land villages to western prairies—they are so much more social. For you may see strange sights now in staid New England. If you were to walk down the quiet main street of a number of villages near the Connecticut river you would see the dignified colonial homes, broad and hospitable, still shaded by stately elms. It would seem 40 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS that portraits of Pilgrim Fathers must hang on those walls, that Mayflower furniture alone could be appro¬ priate, and that the children must represent the culture of the Boston owl, which, we are told, never says “ To- who,” but always “ To-whom! ” But the little folks that tumble about that stately mansion have such names as Sobieski and Pultowski and Jackenowski. Their fathers were pilgrims, but they came by way of Ellis Island and not by way of Plymouth Rock. We may view them with dismay and sigh for our dear Yankee children, but this is another case where the foreigner has come to our relief. It was about 1880 that the New England farmers were dismayed to find themselves without hands to work their fields. Crops were coming on, no help was in sight, the demand was pressing, what should they do? One pushing farmer thought of Castle Garden, the Ellis Island of that day, where thousands of immigrants were landing. He went down to New York City and brought back a party of sturdy Poles. It was a success; he must have brought thousands since. Another farmer took up the profitable business of supplying cheap labor and in six years found places for three thousand Poles in New England. “ Then,” as this farmer writes of it, “ it became no longer profitable. The Poles had by this time learned to find their own places.” . . . “ The stories told them by some of the New York agents and others who wanted to make money out of them at times caused trouble,” he admitted. That is what has always made trouble,—the men who have lied to make money out of foreigners, and the people who, while they allowed them to labor, treated them with disdain, as if they were inferior beings. It was hardly fair, when the New England farmer so needed help, that the Pole who GARDENERS AND FRUIT-GROWERS 41 supplied it had to pay as much as ten dollars for the privilege! Before the coming of the Poles, the farmers of the Connecticut valley had thought that only the rich land near the river was worth cultivating, and they had prac¬ tically abandoned the thin soil, higher up. The Poles discovered that this light soil was quite as profitable for certain crops, and consequently the terrace lands have quadrupled in value. The immigrant usually begins as a hired man with monthly wages. He learns to raise tobacco and onions, the staples of the district. After a time he buys land or takes it on shares. He makes a good farmer and good citizen. He is honest and pays promptly. The men are as shrewd as the Yankees in trading. One young Pole named Roman Skibisky, in 1901, made four thousand dollars dealing in onions. He purchased about sixty-five hundred bushels of onions, paying forty cents a bushel for them. He kept them in cold storage and sold them in the spring at $1.10 a bushel. In school their children do well. These children may be gathered into our American Sunday-schools, many of the elders having no church connection. In 1911, the Polish farmers of New England were given a fine opportunity to learn the best things about farming, and so pleased were they that they wrote home, and an account of it was published in the newspapers of Poland. This is what happened. The Massachusetts Agricultural College invited the Polish farmers to spend a day with them. Ninety-five intelligent men responded, and the faculty say that never within their college build¬ ings were there gathered more appreciative listeners. Through an able interpreter, these Poles not only learned the most up-to-date farm methods, but they heard stir- 42 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS ring addresses on good citizenship, and “ What the Polish People Have Done for America.” WHO ARE THESE POLES? There are probably three million Poles in our country, and they are found in our cities and on farms, east and central west. Wisconsin says, “ We want all the Poles we can get.” Theirs has been a great nation; they have given to the world Copernicus, the astronomer, Chopin, the composer, Paderewski, the pianist, Sienkiewicz, the novelist, Sobieski, the patriot, Pulaski and Kosciusko who aided us in the Revolution. Their home land lies between Russia, Germany and Austria. About the time of our own Revolution they lost their independence as a nation and became subject to these three nations. They have been sorely oppressed and they are coming to this country to give their children the freedom and comfort that they have been denied. They are ready to work, ready to learn, ready to become good citizens. Many of their settlements are found in Long Island, New York and New Jersey. One little Russian immigrant to New England, Mary Antin, is now a charming writer, the wife of a professor in Columbia University. Her story, “ The Promised Land,” is aglow with enthusiasm. The Boston public schools were to her the gates of paradise. She pictures so vividly the blossoming of her own child soul that your heart thrills with hers as you read. In the midst of poverty so dark you might think no cheer could reach her, she says : “ My world ever rang with good tidings ! ” Of the Boston public library she writes, “ Did I not say it was my palace? Mine, though I was born an alien, though I lived on Dover Street! My palace,— mine, mine!” GARDENERS AND FRUIT-GROWERS 43 “ Florida produces most of the onions that are grown in New York.” Does that have a queer sound? This explains it,—Florida is a small town in New York State. And here, as well as in New England, the Poles are raising onions. So many are the onions and so fragrant that one traveler remarks that as his train passed through in the spring time he could smell them, though the fields were several miles away. He says in The Out¬ look: “ I saw a family of seven, father, mother, five children, all on their knees among the onions. I asked one of these, a little girl of eleven, with a sweet smile and with English she had acquired in the district school, which she liked better, work or school. ‘ School/ she answered simply; ‘ work in the fields is harder/ And surely it is. From six in the morning until eight at night they toil; they seem to have acheless backs and tireless hands. An hour and a half of this hand and knee work, in the hot August sun, would discourage most of us. “ The mother usually has a high-wheeled baby carriage in which she trundles the youngest to the field, and leaves it under the shade of a tree, perhaps guarded by a dog, while she goes off to her work. Or she gets her ‘ man ’ to make a shelter for the baby. Three stout sticks are stuck in the soft ground, forming a tripod to which a sheet or blanket is tied. In this the baby is placed with a covering to shield it from the sun. ‘ We work five months and live twelve/ said one man. They looked strong and healthy, but my heart went out to the young mother who told me she had to work in the fields 4 only ' from eight in the morning to five at night, because of h et five-months-old baby. And yet she seemed cheerful and happy, on her knees there in the black dirt, looking up 44 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS smilingly through her red sunbonnet as she told me how good the baby was.” / Italians also are very successful in market gardening. It is said that there is not a single city reached by Italians, having available market land near it, that is not now receiving vegetables and fruits from Italian labor. We find such settlements in New England, the Eastern States, in Ohio and Alabama, Tennessee and Texas. They are adepts in the culture of berries and grapes. California has many Italians successful in grape culture. In Louisi¬ ana, Mississippi and Texas they raise cotton. Germans, Hollanders and Scandinavians are thrifty farmers in our northwest. The Portuguese are successful market gar¬ deners on our eastern and western coasts. The Japanese and the Greeks are largely employed in California fruit culture. The Swiss are capable dairy farmers. THE BEST THING YET We began this chapter with the story of an American farm boy, shall we close it with the story of a young man, fresh from college? The boy lived in Illinois, the young man lives in North Carolina. One day he and his father were traveling on the train through their broad lands like western prairies. “ I don’t know what to do with it,” said his father. This set the boy to thinking. When he left college he was still thinking, thinking, how best to use not only his father’s acres but the thousands lying idle in the South. It was the same problem that men from every state studied in that memorable Con¬ ference, which we talked of in our last chapter,—“ How shall we get our land tilled ? ” After studying western farming and Canadian farming, Hugh MacRae made up GARDENERS AND FRUIT-GROWERS 45 his mind that the very best work would be done by divid¬ ing the land into little farms,—so small that one family could own the land and do all the work, not needing to hire help. He sent men abroad to find out where the best farming was done. He found that the English- speaking people, the Germans and French did not want to do our farming. He found honest, busy farming folk in north Italy, men eager to earn little homes for their children. He brought over seven families. This was the beginning! What has he now ? That first Italian colony has grown to number forty-seven happy families, each with a comfortable home! Besides this first colony there are now colonies of Germans, Hollanders and Hun¬ garians, one all Poles and one Poles and Hollanders. Each colony is prospering, each group is doing the thing they know best how to do. And why has this young man succeeded when other such schemes have failed? He has succeeded because of his beautiful friendliness! He thought out the needs of the foreigners. He put himself in their place. He found they needed some one to tell them where they could best raise the crop they understood at home. So he has men who, in their own language, explain the soil and what it is adapted to. He hires experts from all over the country to teach them the most advanced methods of farming, he has it done for them in object lessons before their eyes. If they have no money at first, he has plenty of day labor for them on public works; he helps them to start their own farms, the best seeds are provided, care is given to the marketing of their crops, that they may receive the best returns. The people cluster together about the little churches and schoolhouses, where the children learn English. One colony has a brass band! Best of all is the pride in their 46 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS own little homes. They cover them with vines, they inclose their gardens with hedges, they hang lace curtains in the windows. As soon as a man owns his piece of land he feels he is a partner in the whole United States,— no fear of his becoming an anarchist,—he is too eager to become a good American. There is something about owning a bit of ground and tilling it, that seems to stir the very best in any man. And how happy they are! One boy of only seventeen was ambitious to own his own land. He showed it exultantly to a visitor, waving his arms joyously about, as he exclaimed ,—“ In t’ree year more I own all dis! ” This is all the work of a vigorous, thoughtful, neigh¬ borly young American who welcomes the foreigner with a friendly hand. Oh, yes, it pays, too, as an investment, but Mr. MacRae says: “ It is not a matter merely of raising vegetables, or of making money, but of raising human beings,—of making men and women.” V IN THE CONSTRUCTION CAMP With their hands they have builded great cities, and they cannot be sure of a roof over their heads. They have opened mines . . . and they are cold. With their hands they erect temple and palace, and their habitation is a room in a crowded tenement.— Helen Keller. H OW does our land now differ from the Pilgrim Fathers’ home? They lived in log cabins and drew their water from a spring. We have towering cities with spring water supplied by an aqueduct. Instead of footpaths through the wilderness, our high¬ ways are macadamized roads, canals and railways. Who made these aqueducts and highways? “Our engineers,” do you answer proudly, and feel sure that here, at least, we Americans are doing our own labor? Consider for a moment the names of our American engineers,—how many have a foreign ring! And did you ever stop to think how few would be our public works had we only engineers ? They supply only the brain-work,—they draw the plans and solve the problems. Dig, dig, dig— that is the way the road begins; pick, pick, pick,—shovel, shovel, shovel,—that is the way the canal proceeds, and the aqueduct. And who supplies the muscle? At first it was the Irishman, but now he is “ boss,” and strange as it seems, most of our diggers, those who go to the bowels of the earth for us, laying the foundations of our skyscrapers, those pick and shovel men, belong to the nation that has 47 48 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS given us the most treasured objects in our cities—the marvels of Italian art! Think of it, as you travel, and see gangs of Italians digging by the roadside. Their friends say that they are so sensitive that harsh orders from the “ boss ” sting them as a blow. In the south and west railway construction work is now performed by Mexican laborers. WHERE THEY CAMP OUT Did you ever camp out? Have you slept under the open sky, and watched the exquisite changes of a summer night,—the sunset, the rise of the moon, the flitting cloud, the unspeakable glory of the dawn? Have you enjoyed the comradeship of life in the open—long, intimate talks around the blazing logs of your camp fire? If this joy has been yours, you think of camping as the very poetry of life. The laborers on our highways and aqueducts live in camps,—but their experiences are not so happy as yours. The laborers on a railway are usually housed in old box cars, dumped by the roadside. These are often without windows, they have no lockers. In them men sleep and keep their belongings. The cooking and washing is done out of doors in the summer. In the winter a stove must be crowded into the car, and the cooking done there. If there are no cars, the men make themselves shacks from discarded bits of board and tin. In some cases the conditions are so wretched that it is said “ the very beasts of the jungle live better than they.” And are these quarters provided without charge? By no means. Even if the cars are so foul that the men prefer to sleep on the ground, they must each pay the padrone for rent. Their food they must buy of this padrone. It may be so stale that they cannot eat it, but IN THE CONSTRUCTION CAMP 49 buy it they must, even if they throw it away to buy else¬ where. This “ padrone ” is accountable for most of their troubles. He is their labor agent. When a contractor needs men, he sends for the padrone; the padrone gets the immigrants from the city, charging each from $1 to $3 for the chance of the job. His greatest profit is on the two items of rent and food. No wonder that laborers are found housed in tiers in horse stalls, in stables and condemned houses. In one such building where the only way to reach their bunks was by rickety stairs, the company posted a notice that the men used those stairs at their own risk! Where men work in shifts the rude bunks frequently serve for three sets of men. For such accommodations men pay one dollar a month and for food they pay higher than city prices for what is often unfit to eat. If the men complain to the padrone, they are discharged. The contractor pays the men through the padrone, and whatever charges he may make are deducted before the men get their pay. Men are often shifted from job to job that the padrone may collect a fresh fee for each change. Yet those in authority complain that the men are restless, they change about, they are not satisfied with their wages! The Italian laborer, landing in New York, is often met at the dock by the padrone. He is sent with a gang to a construction camp, he labors there in the midst of discomfort and wretched conditions, and at the end of a season he may go back to sunny Italy with his little hoard,—and that is all he has gained from our beautiful America; no friendliness, no taste of liberty, no help toward a better manhood, or a better home for his chil¬ dren, no welcome in the church of Jesus Christ. The construction camps on public works carried on 50 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS by the state are little better. The foreign laborers have scant help toward becoming good Americans. They are crowded in shanties, or stables considered unfit for the teams of the American laborers. In November, 1909, several philanthropic people made a tour of construction camps in New York State. They traveled one thousand two hundred and eighty-six miles through mud and rain. They visited camps on the barge canal that is to be sev¬ eral hundred miles long, and the aqueduct that is to carry a billion gallons of water daily to New York City. They found a vast amount of work done by foreign laborers,, some of those on the barge canal being encamped on land too marshy for other use. They found the padrone in full control in most of the camps, a building with sixty- one cots for a hundred men and other ill conditions. The aqueduct camps conducted by the New York City govern¬ ment are better, for the city realizes that its health de¬ pends on its pure water. The quarters there are better. These camps have a health officer, hospital accommoda¬ tion, standards as to shacks, water supply and removal of waste. A PRIMER FOR THE GANG Several years ago, as gangs of Italian laborers were at work on the aqueduct near Pittsburgh, a lady from New York might be seen, busily noting down the orders of their boss. She wrote such sentences as these, “ All grip the rope ! ” “ Push, boys, push ! ” “ All pull this way! ” Who was she, and what do you suppose she was about? It was Miss Sarah Wood Moore of New York. She had studied art in Italy, she loved the Italian people. Hef heart went out to their laboring men, doing our heavy work, dumbly driven by orders in a strange tongue, im- Courtesy Society tor Italian Immigrants IN THE CONSTRUCTION CAMP 5i posed on at every turn. Often they were injured by accidents, simply because they could not understand the warning given. She made up her mind that their first need was Eng¬ lish. But of what use was the primer, such as you and I used? “ It is a cat,” “ See the red hen,” is slow work when a man’s life is in danger because he knows not “ push ” from “ pull.” That explains her seat by the roadside. She would find the words they needed most, and from them make a little primer. She opened a night school at the labor camp, the first camp school. Miss Moore did not waste time talking about immigrant prob¬ lems,—she visited them in the loneliness of their camp, she became their friend and she made friends for them. The president of the Pittsburgh Board of Trade said, “ She has given to America an altogether new idea of what these fellows are. Since her coming our feeling of distrust and aversion has entirely vanished. My family was formerly afraid to occupy our summer home near the camp. Now we feel the camp to be a faithful body¬ guard of men.” Is it because the Italian is so used to sunny skies that he dreads a drop of rain? They say his first purchase in America is an umbrella and a sprinkle is a sign to stop work! Miss Moore’s next school was at the camp of the Ashokan Reservoir, near Kingston, New York. It is taking ten years to construct this great aqueduct, so the camps are permanent; many men have their families, and a special district school has been opened for the children, and a camp school for the men. At Valhalla, New York, another great reservoir dam is being con¬ structed, also under the control of the New York City Water Commission, and here, too, is a permanent camp. There, too, went Miss Moore to start the helpful work, 52 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS and there she died at her post, in 1911. She had literally given her all to the people she loved, denying herself al¬ most the necessaries of life, that she might more freely supply their needs. Her artistic appreciation of the Italian people brought her very near them, and she longed to open for them the door to the good things of America. She tried, too, to open the eyes of Americans to the pos¬ sibilities of the Italian, and to bring the two into sym¬ pathetic relations. It was a work most Christlike in its ministry. CHILDREN OF THE TENEMENTS Italian artists have given us our loveliest pictures of the Christ Child,—are we worthy the name of Christians while we let little Italian children whom Jesus loves, work long hours for a pittance, starving their lives to supply our luxuries? I could show you pictures of little Antoinette, eight years old, who receives less than one cent for tying forty knots in a willow plume; Michelina, thirteen, who has made lace since she was ten. She works from three o’clock, after school, until nine or ten at night. Her mother says, “Michelina is so little be¬ cause she maka de lace so much Poor little, dwarfed Michelina in free America! A little tot of three makes 540 forget-me-nots in a day for five cents. Isn’t it piti¬ ful? Tessie, eight, and Genevieve, six, pick nut meats, after school, until eight at night. A trained nurse from a children’s hospital testifies that half the cases of spinal disease that come to her are caused by this sort of work. And Jesus said, “ Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones.” The fathers of these children are dock laborers or “ shovel ” men, perhaps out of work. To be sure, this is in the city, but often these men are Courtesy North American Civic League for Immigrants A Mother’s Class at Valhalla Camp School A Railroad Construction Camp IN THE CONSTRUCTION CAMP 53 driven to the city by the wretched conditions of camp life, or the impossibility of keeping their families with them there. In many cities and towns our churches have opened chapels for the Italians, and neighborly service has been rendered through clubs and classes. They are the most responsive of all foreign people to such effort, and several little missions have developed into strong churches. The construction camps, of which we have talked in this chap¬ ter, are usually apart from the towns and their Christian ministries. FRIENDS At Kensico Dam, Valhalla, New York, is the best in¬ stance of American friendly help. The methods resemble settlement work and benefit both Italian and Slavic la¬ borers. There are a kindergarten for the little ones and a playground for the children, sewing and housekeeping classes for the women, night classes for the men, weekly entertainments for all. Religious services are held in rotation by Protestants, Greeks and Roman Catholics. The results are what were hoped for: the people live more like Americans, the men work better, the contractor and the laborer are drawn nearer together. With the exception of these two reservoir camps, the neglect of the men in construction work is appalling. In the summer of 1912, Dr. Jane Robbins, of Brooklyn, a leader in the Society for Italian Immigrants, made up her mind to open a school for laborers on an electric road in western Massachusetts. When she arrived on the spot, the difficulties were so great it seemed at first that a camp school was impossible. She says she felt like the farmer when he first gazed at the giraffe, and exclaimed ,—“There ain’t no such animile! ” The build- 54 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS ings used for the temporary camp were part of an aban¬ doned factory. The contractor allowed her the use of a room,—but it was fifty feet long and sixty feet wide,— bare and dark. Nothing daunted, Dr. Robbins began. She issued a circular in Italian in which she told the men about the school. How do you suppose it opened ? “ Distinguished Sir! ” that is a little surprising for a shovel man, isn’t it? But the explanation is that the Italian considers our “ Dear Sir ” too affectionate for common use—and it had to begin some way! Tables and benches without backs were made, like those at a picnic ground, a few poster pictures were nailed to the walls, a few lanterns gave a gleam here and there, a blackboard was hung, and a graphophone rolled forth a familiar air,—that was the real invitation. The music caught the ears of the men lounging about the dull barracks or the company store across the way. One by one a dozen or more wandered in. Dozens more listened from the open windows,—they wanted first to see what it would be like, or perhaps they were too tired to “ wash up.” The room was so vast, the lanterns in the center suggested a drop of light in a waste of darkness, but one familiar Italian air after another carried a home¬ like wave of feeling to the foreigner. The “ gentle lady,” as they called the teacher, spoke to them in their own language,—how good that sounded to homesick ears! She hung a chart on the wall. On it were pictures of their tools, each with its English name, and one by one these were learned. Then, perhaps, came a lesson in English on “ How to light a fire.” With a hatchet, the teacher illustrated, “ I take a hatchet. The hatchet cuts the wood. I pick up the pieces,” etc. Not very long could these big scholars work so hard. Soon there IN THE CONSTRUCTION CAMP 55 was more music. “ I love that word, ‘ liberty,’ ” said one eager scholar. So the “ gentle lady ” composed this song, which they sang to the tune of “ Maryland, My Mary¬ land.” Now let our voices gayly ring, Liberty, O Liberty! Thy praises we will ever sing, Liberty, O Liberty! In every land, by every sea, Strong arms grow stronger serving thee: Thy faithful servants we would be, Liberty, O Liberty! Thy name shall be forever dear, Liberty, O Liberty! By it we conquer every fear, Liberty, O Liberty! As friends and brothers in one band, We give to each a helping hand Till thou shalt rule in every land, Liberty, O Liberty! NOT OXEN, BUT MEN WITH SOULS When this school was well established with volunteer helpers, Dr. Robbins was ready to open another. But that was still more difficult, for the next camp was in the woods, nine miles from the first. There were no houses near at hand, she must walk two miles, after school, to the nearest farmhouse for the night; each alternate day she must return to Lee, nine miles, by any chance vehicle she might find. The contractor allowed her a shanty for the school and a tool chest served as desk. Would one American woman be willing to do all this for a gang of Italian laborers? An old berry- picker of the neighborhood was interested. He met her 56 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS on the road. “ You that school teacher?” ‘"Yes.” “ You ain’t afraid of Italians?” “ No.” “ Not forty thousand Italians ? ” “ No.” “ I guess you’ll do ! ” One night there was a heavy thunder shower when school was over and the contractor asked two young men to accompany the teacher on her two-mile walk, but the thunder so alarmed the lads that she sent them home and continued her way through the woods alone! The camp school does much for the men. They need English to prevent accidents, to guide them into citizen¬ ship, to help them to understand their work and to adopt American standards of living. The bosses say that the schools make the men more contented with their work and that is a strong point in their eyes. It also gives them friends. Each man may be but a “ number ” to the boss, who thinks only of his strength to shovel, but under his swarthy skin there is the soul of a man. In his heart there springs enthusiasm for the good and beautiful. Not many Americans think of this, but the camp school teachers win the men’s friendship by their own friendliness and they bridge the gap between the boss and the men until the former appreciates that he is dealing with human souls, not with oxen. COLLEGE MEN AS COMRADES Not only have “ gentle ladies ” realized the need of the foreigner to understand English, and not only are the Italians the pupils to-day. The Young Men’s Chris¬ tian Association is leading thousands of young Americans in this helpful service. In such classes, in 1912, 15,000 young foreigners were studying English and American government. These classes are largely taught by volun¬ teer workers. In Camden, New Jersey, high school boys IN THE CONSTRUCTION CAMP, 57 taught successfully and a host of college men are thus engaged. Some have declared that the classes of for¬ eigners they taught while they were in college were their best preparation for engineering work which placed them later in charge of foreign laborers. Listen to what was said by one of the greatest football captains America has ever known: “ Remembering what I learned at college, when I became foreman I treated my gang of Italians as men, and it was really pitiful to see the way they returned the little kindness I showed them. There were no labor difficulties. Each day I was met with cheery words of greeting and the men never failed to say ‘ Good¬ night/ often going out of their way to do so. When the job was completed they came to me, saying they wanted to work for me always.” Many Christian Endeavor Societies maintain similar classes. Can you think of a service more pleasing to Him who said: “ I was a stranger and ye took me in. . . . Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me ” ? VI CHILDREN IN CANNERIES u I live for -those who love me, Whose hearts are kind and true; For the heaven that smiles above me And awaits my spirit, too. For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that I can do.” AVE you heard the story of the Alaska Indian, who was amazed at the number and variety of articles that came to his missionary inclosed in tin ? He saw canned fruits and meats, canned vegetables and oil, canned fish. One night the missionary invited him to hear his newly-received phonograph. In wondering awe the Indian listened to a familiar hymn. His quiet comment was, “ Him canned missinnary! ” Has anything ever brought to your mind the number of tin cans that come into your home, and the variety of foodstuffs that they contain? Here again we find that our “ Comrades From Other Lands ” are doing much work for us. East and west, foreign labor is employed in the canneries. CHILD TOILERS Let us visit a cannery in New York State, where they are at work on beans. Here they tell us that no machine has yet been made to “ snip ” or “ string ” the beans so 58 CHILDREN IN CANNERIES 59 well as the fingers of little children. If the beans are stringless, the snipping consists in breaking off the ends of the bean. Here we see over one hundred little chil¬ dren at work, mostly girls. But what does it mean,— does not the law of New York forbid child labor in factories under fourteen, and after that for longer hours than from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.? This is the explanation we receive: “ The law does not forbid farm labor for chil¬ dren, and as most of the work done by children in can¬ neries is in sheds that are open at the sides, it is called outdoor work, and the law does not touch it.” And this is the result: In August, 1908, 593 children under four¬ teen were found at work in this state. In one factory the majority were seven, eight or nine years old. In the Italian shed were children working of all ages, from two years old , up! In 1910, in one factory, children were seen working ten hours a day. Shed work begins at 7 a.m. and has been known to continue until midnight. In fifty-two canneries about one thousand children under sixteen were found working. When they come to the cannery the company may lodge the workers in old box cars, in barns or shacks, with no privacy and the poorest drainage. Two rooms are usually allowed to one family, and in these they may crowd as many children or boarders as they wish. Many of the workers are Italians, or Poles, who leave the city early and spend about six months in cannery work. In some cases they work at late crops until Christmas. The whole family is occupied in the busy season. The children sit close to mother or sister, working for hours at intense speed. They may be released to take a box of beans to the weigher, carrying for several hundred feet weights far too heavy for their years. At night it is no uncom¬ mon sight to see a whole family of children fall asleep 6 o COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS over their work, while the parents keep stolidly on so long as the supply of beans holds out. Where the children are not employed they rove about the countryside, neglected by their parents and uncared for by health or school officer. When they return to school they have fallen far behind their regular classes. One Italian boy who had worked in a tomato factory until November, returned to school and was dropped to the grade of a year before. “ You may kill me if you like,” he said to his father, “ but I won’t go back to the seventh grade.” Don’t you sympathize with him? He was one of the few boys in the Italian colony who had attained the seventh grade. At one cannery a vacation school has been opened where the children, detained out of town by their parents’ labors, may make up the work they are losing in city schools, and where they may learn to make things with their hands, and have play and good times. These foreign workers are often obtained by means of the padrone, who brings them from the foreign quar¬ ter of the cities or small towns. These homes in foreign quarters, in one city of western New York, are “ no better than chicken houses,” one investigator testifies, and she says that no such living conditions exist in Sicily, from whence many of the workers come. The great cities have philanthropic societies which befriend the aliens, but the small towns often utterly neglect the workers from across the sea. Friends of the foreigner are urging such small towns to look up these strangers and provide for them the good things of America,—clean homes, good schools, the use of the school at night for classes and lectures and pleasure for the grown people. They are asked to open kindergartens for the children, and playgrounds, and to invite them to a joyful worship CHILDREN IN CANNERIES 61 of the Father of us all. The foreigners need to be taught how to become citizens, they need interpreters in court, and safe banks for their savings, for scant justice is often shown them. Although such service is new to most towns, the people are usually glad to help when they are shown how to do it, for they are prejudiced against the foreigners only because they do not under¬ stand them. SARDINES OR HERRING? Probably most of your “ French sardines ” are only herring from Maine! Who canned them for you? Chil¬ dren, children, children,—during the busy season not less than a thousand of them, under fourteen years of age, are at work, and almost all are foreigners. Many come from Canada. The season lasts from April to December and while there is not work every day, there may be any day; at the call of the whistle the children come trooping to the cannery. It may be in the early morning, or noon, or late at night when a boatload of fish is brought in from the seines, and whether the children are asleep or at play, they must obey that call. All the fish from the haul must be canned before stopping, so they may work fifteen hours at a stretch, and children may return from their work at midnight or be called out in the gray dawn. And they are so little! Many of them are only nine or ten years old. A visitor says: “ I found one child of five working in the packing room, usually employed as long as the other workers and earning from eight to twelve cents per day.” The work is simple,—that of scaling or “ flaking ” the little fish,—and children’s deft fingers often do it more easily than grown folks! The flaked fish are cooked 62 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS in ovens, by steam, and then packed in the cans by women and children. During the short season when there is no work at the canneries, few parents insist that their children shall attend school,—so that many of these little workers do not go to school at all. The cannery colony is utterly neglected by the school and by the church. Yet these children will one day be American citizens, and they are now heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven. OYSTERS AND CRANBERRIES “ It is perfectly possible for a child to be born in Balti¬ more and to grow up to the age of fourteen and never attend school. That is what is going on all the time.” This is a strange statement—how can it be? The little Poles of Baltimore are many of them en¬ gaged in canneries. They work near by during the full summer season, returning to Baltimore in November; by the last of November they migrate to Florida, where they help to can oysters. Their work is to “ shuck,” or shell, the oysters. Near Appalachicola, Florida, there are banks of oyster shells, fifteen feet deep, covering many acres,—these oysters were almost all shelled by little children! These canning factories extend from Florida to Louisiana and all employ children. Many of four and five years struggle with the rough, heavy shells, and earn about five cents a day. On busy days they work from three or four in the morning until four in the afternoon. One mother urged on her five-year-old boy, saying, “ He’s lazy; he could earn five cents a day if he’d only work.” The children who work on the shrimp do not begin so early in the morning, and they can work but six hours, for the juice of the shrimp CHILDREN IN CANNERIES 63 affects the fingers, and they become swollen and bleeding, yet the children keep bravely at it. In the evening the little fingers are hardened by bathing in a solution of alum, to get them ready for the next day. When friends of the children tried to pass a law forbidding this child labor, the oyster packers protested that they were “ not Florida children, they were little foreigners! ” Who pick the cranberries for your Thanksgiving dinner? Once more we find our “ comrades from other lands/’ and again, such little folks! In New Jersey and Massachusetts large gangs of foreigners are employed for brief seasons. In New Jersey the Italians are em¬ ployed by the padrones, as they are for construction work, and they suffer the same bad treatment. The padrones charge them large sums for getting the job and sometimes they charge a commission on every bushel they pick. They sell to them all they eat, and in this they make all the money possible. They crowd the families into poor shacks, sometimes a family of eight being crowded into one room. They prefer large fami¬ lies, for every child is a picker,—even the babies are carried out to the bogs; all the others must work, and sometimes the padrones are rough with them. One-third of the workers are under fourteen, some under five. The bogs are wet, the mosquitoes are as bad as the padrones! All these children, like the cannery children, lose so much of school that when they return they have fallen behind their grade. FRIENDS OF CHILDREN Not only construction camps and canneries gather little colonies of foreigners,—there are many such near brickyards, mines and quarries. Near New York City, 64 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS below Coney Island, there is such a settlement employed in making fertilizer. There are fourteen hundred for¬ eigners there, including Russians, Italians, Poles and Germans. This little colony was found to be utterly neglected by the city, except that a good school had been opened. Friends of the foreigner have organized a “ Civic League ” for the men and a “ Junior League ” for the boys and girls, who have become as interested as any American children in cleaning up their yards and streets and in learning to become good Americans. They have evening classes for grown people, and entertain¬ ments. A visiting nurse is needed to teach the care of the sick and good motion picture shows and other forms of recreation. The little Protestant chapel has no regular minister. The National Child Labor Committee is composed of warm-hearted, earnest men and women who are doing everything in their power to secure laws in each state that shall forbid toil for children. In 1911, they said, “ The fruit, vegetable and seafood canneries remain practically exempt from child labor legislation/’ In 1912, Congress established in Washington the National Child Welfare Bureau. This investigates conditions of child life throughout our country and we may look for better things through its help. WHAT NEW YORK STATE IS DOING New York State receives and distributes nearly three- fourths of the foreigners who arrive in this country, and its state government is now exerting itself in a fatherly care of the stranger. In 1906, the cry for farm labor was so urgent that the State Department of Agriculture opened a Farm Bureau, with an office in New York City, CHILDREN IN CANNERIES 65 to help the farmer to get laborers, and to guide the im¬ migrant willing to go to the country. Later on, it was realized that foreigners on arrival need friendly help as they try to gain a foothold in a strange country, they need protection from men who take advantage of their ignorance to cheat or mislead them. After carefully look¬ ing into the matter, the State Legislature, in 1910, cre¬ ated the Bureau of Industries and Immigration. That may sound big and cold, but its efforts are most kindly and the people who are at the heart of it are an inspira¬ tion to us all. They say: “ The making of new races into Americans is a precious part of America’s inheritance.” They wish to meet the stranger with the hand of fellow¬ ship, give him honest employment and self-respect and inspire him with a love for his adopted land. To accomplish this, they assure every foreigner, ig¬ norant of our language and our laws, a hearing in his own language, where he may receive justice. Their helpers speak Italian, Polish, German, Yiddish, French and Hungarian. They try to prevent by law the abuse of foreigners as they land and look for work. They encourage them to seek the open country. They have published a pamphlet in combined English and Italian, or English and Polish, that tells the stranger about our labor laws, the care of property, farm conditions, child labor, and how to become a citizen. The Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution have issued sim¬ ilar pamphlets for free distribution. This Bureau inves¬ tigates the condition of foreigners in all parts of New York State and is making special effort to have every child enrolled in school. The daughter of a well-known Wall Street banker of New York City gave her time, her great wealth, and her personal service to the foreigner, through this Bureau. 66 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS She carried on tireless investigations in their behalf throughout the state, and on such a trip she was killed. Of her it was said, “ The state has no enrolled soldier who has responded to every call more promptly, who has performed the duties set him more unflinchingly, or who has given his life more utterly on the field of battle than she in the cause in which she believed.” “ Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends!’ VII WITH THE LUMBER-JACKS When one meets Jesus of Nazareth there is no way back; there are new marching orders, and they call, “ Forward.” —Steiner. W E will turn our eyes from the little children working in the east and south to the strong men whose axes are ringing in the far north¬ west. “ Lumber-jacks ” they call the men of this great army. There are 30,000 in Minnesota alone, and almost a half-million, it is said, in our northern woods, while the whole standing army of the United States numbers but 77,000 men. There is a man whose name is loved among woodsmen from the Adirondacks to Puget Sound. The lumber-jacks call him their “ Sky Pilot,” for he guides them into port over seas that are wild and stormy. His name is Frank Higgins and he is a man’s man, every inch of him. His stride is that of the woodsman, his voice has the ring of true friendliness, his grip is as honest as his eye. If you should meet him in the wilder¬ ness you would take him for a lumber-jack himself, for he wears their costume of high boots, Mackinaw coat and cap. The lumbermen are a rough company, their work is hard, and when they return to town they are fiercely beset with temptation. The saloon keepers and the gam¬ blers lie in wait for them and often despoil them of their last dollar, but,—“ I love these fellows,” says Higgins; 67 68 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS “ I’d rather lift the down-and-outs than hobnob with mil¬ lionaires. ‘ Does it pay ’ ? Why, I’ve bought many a man, body and soul, for a quarter.” “ Bought them? ” “Yes, bought them! I fed them, got them on their feet and showed them the love of Christ. A good meal and a little love have made many of them Christians.” WHERE THE AXES RING When logging begins in any locality the first thing done is to lay out the road over which the logs shall be hauled. Trees are felled, every stump removed, and to make the road as nearly level as possible every little hill is graded down, that the loads may be heavy and accidents averted. This work is done in the early fall. When the bitter cold has frozen hill and valley, the rut cutter is sent to cut a deep groove in each side of the new road. Later, the ruts are filled with water, and in this icy track the runners of the huge logging sleds travel with ease and safety, carrying their tremendous loads to the landing. The record load for four horses in Wis¬ consin is said to be one hundred and twenty-four tons! Where the trees are felled the men work in crews. The sawyers bring the giants to the earth, the swampers clear the trunks of their branches and make the clearings through which the logs are drawn to the “ skidway ” or road. The work is hard, but the frosty air is exhilarating, and the swinging axes strike with a cheery sound. The men are at work when the sun appears and it is dark when they return to camp. The bunkhouses are big, roomy buildings, with double¬ decked bunks on each side, the ends toward the center of the room, where there is a large stove. Over this is WITH THE LUMBER-JACKS 69 built a rack for drying the men’s clothes. The cold is so intense that every lumber-jack wears several pairs of socks, and hundreds of pairs may be seen drying at night. Few of the bunkhouses have any tables. Water and tin basins are near the door for those who care to use them. The cookshed is both kitchen and dining room; at one end is the large stove, while long tables covered with oilcloth fill the floor space. The dishes are of tin or enamel ware, the knives and forks are of iron, the spoons are of tin. The food is abundant and of good quality. Besides these two buildings there is an office where the clerk and the bosses sleep, and here is found a little store called the “wannigan.” When several camps are owned by one company, the most important person is the representative, called the “ walking boss,” who passes from camp to camp to oversee the work. The men call the camp carpenter the “ wood butcher,” the clerk is the “ ink-splasher.” Most of the men work as farm hands or in railway construction in the summer, returning to the woods for the logging season. It is said that three out of five are foreigners, coming from Scotland, from Canada, from Norway and Sweden, laying low for us the forests to supply our broad land with timber. THE SKY PILOT Frank Higgins had strange playfellows when he was a boy—they were Sioux Indians! His home was in the forests of Canada; there were few white families as neighbors, but Indian tepees were near by. From the Sioux he learned to draw the bow, and other tasks of the growing braves. He remembers a whipping he re¬ ceived because he exchanged a loaf of his mother’s 70 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS bread for an Indian bow and arrows. From the time he was twelve years old he helped to support the family, and he had little time for schooling. When he was eighteen he gave himself, heart and soul, to his Master^ and at once began to lead his companions to Him. He was eager to preach,—he says that when working in the woods he would preach to the trees and the stumps! When he was twenty he had the opportunity to enter school in Toronto, and so backward was he that he had to work at the side of little children, but he stuck to his tasks for five years. Then he went to Minnesota and became a lay preacher. Later he was ordained to full ministry. One day Mr. Higgins went with a friend to see the log drive. Do you know how they bring the mighty loads of lumber to the mill? Drawn on sledges to the river¬ side, it waits there until the warm springtime opens the water courses, and upon their surface the giant logs are floated. To guide them in their course, and to break up the masses that, gathering in midstream and wedging against the banks, form “ jams,” the rivermen, or “ riverpigs,” as they are called, spring lightly from log to log, hauling and pushing with pike and peavey. When the day’s work is done the men flock to the “ wannigan,” which here is a flat boat, combining bunkhouse, cook- shed and store. After their meal that evening the rivermen lounged about the campfire, and what do you suppose they asked of Mr. Higgins ? They said, “ Boss, won’t you preach to us ? ” They did not ask him to tell them a story, or to talk to them, but to preach, and, surprised though he was, you may be sure that the man who had preached to stumps was glad of this chance to preach to rivermen. He stepped upon a log for a platform and began to sing Log Driving ir' T%ir f| <4f>& : >j*f V > S ' ■ i; 1 •< t J WITH THE LUMBER-JACKS 7 * the hymn, “ Nearer, my God, to Thee.” Many of these men were from Protestant homes, they had sung that, hymn in boyhood, and their voices rang out in the twi¬ light. Mr. Higgins prayed for them from a full heart, he told them of the Man, Christ Jesus, who loves the wanderer, he read from his pocket Testament, and again the woods rang with their voices as they sang, Jesus, lover of my soul.” That was his first service with the woodsmen, but again and again came invitations to Mr. Higgins from both rivermen and lumber-jacks to come to them and preach, until at length he gave his whole time to them and has won their love, and the name of the “ Sky Pilot,” or the “ Walking Boss for the Sky Route Company.” A DOG TEAM, BLIZZARDS AND WOLVES After two or three years of tramping from camp to camp the Pilot found that though a man could do much, a man and two dogs could do more, so he bought two large St. Bernards, and now Flash and Spark are his constant helpers. The doors of the bunkhouse open easily without raising a latch, and often the Pilot drives the team against the door and right into the bunkhouse a novel entrance for a preacher! The men crowd around the handsome dogs, for the lumbermen are passionately fond of animals, and the minister explains his errand and plans to hold a service. Flash and Spark are good travelers, and are none the worse for thirty or forty miles. One night the Sky Pilot lost his way and had to camp under the sky with the mercury at zero. He built a roaring fire and divided with his dogs his only suppei .—a rabbit he had shot. The dogs pressed close for warmth, and during the night howling wolves drew near, 72 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS their eyeballs glowing in the darkness. The missionary replenished the fire, and the cheery blaze drove the wolves back into the silence of the forest. Another time, in a blinding blizzard, Mr. Higgins lost all sense of direction, and was obliged to camp with his dogs until the worst of the storm had passed. Not like any church service you ever attended is that in the bunkhouse. Seventy-five men may be crowded into the log shack, lounging on the bunks, or benches. They are coatless, collarless, often bootless, while their boots are heaped around the stove to dry. Lanterns only partly dispel the gloom. Behind an upturned barrel covered by a blanket stands the preacher, earnest, fearless, thrilled with love for God and men. Do the men listen as he talks of their Father in heaven? They listen with hun¬ gry hearts. One night the Pilot told about the Prodigal Son. “ When men who rob and spoil you will not give you a hand, the Father will,” said the Pilot. “ In the Fa¬ ther’s home was the only place the prodigal found a welcome, and in the Lord Jesus Christ you will find a welcome.” Many a head was bowed as the preacher told of how God gave Christ to die that the prodigal might have light and love. That night a young man sought the preacher,— “ Pilot,” he said, “ I want to pray for myself. Tell me how, and I’ll do it.” “ Come on, my boy,” said the Pilot, “ we’ll pray to¬ gether under the pines.” The next day that boy wrote home to his mother, and there was glad rejoicing in her heart as well as among the angels of God. Another night a young man said to Mr. Higgins, “ Isn’t there any way I can make my life count? I am sick of going on this way, Pilot. I’m sledding in the wrong WITH THE LUMBER-JACKS 73 direction. To-night I’m disgusted, so give me a lift.” And the Pilot’s lift led him to better things. He became a Christian, he studied evenings in preparation for future schooling, and is now a civil engineer. A CANOE PARISH Other men have gladly given their lives to spreading the Good Tidings among their fellow-lumbermen, tramp¬ ing from camp to camp, telling of the Gospel that was brought to them. John Sornberger had been a prize fighter and a bar¬ tender, he had fought over one hundred battles in the ring. Several bullets are still in his body and scars of knife and ball will accompany him all his life. So changed was he by the help of Frank Higgins and the grace of God, that instead of being a lumberman, he is now a preacher in Minnesota. How do you suppose he travels about his parish?—not with horses or dogs, but with a canoe! Often when he starts out 011 his preach¬ ing trips, his wife paddles from the bow, he from the stern, and the three children travel amidships. Their home is a shack on the bank of the Mississippi, and the canoe always lies ready for them in their front yard. John Sornberger has found his field among the settlers moving in to occupy the “cutover” land where the lumber-jacks have finished their work. There are few homes as yet in this region, and the rivers and creeks are the best highways. Sometimes he paddles his canoe thirty miles to hold a service. In his parish are lumber¬ men, Indians and a colony of Finns. 74 COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS A HOME PLACE NEEDED A missionary to the lumbermen appeals for a home place ” to which he may invite the lumbermen when they come to town. He makes great circuits through the woods and meets thousands of them every month. He is warmly welcomed in the camps and has a tremendous hold on the men, but he realizes the terrible temptations that meet them when they come to town. There is no place open to them but the saloons; if they do not sit in saloons or pool rooms, they must stand on the street corner. So this missionary plans a “home place” for them. He wants a room where the men can play games, or read, a restaurant, a few cots for those who are out of money. There will be preaching on Sunday and plenty of music. Just such home places are needed in every town near the lumber camps, places where a friendly welcome will meet the woodsmen. In Minnesota, in Oregon, in Washington and in California live this army of lumbermen. We must not neglect these comrades of the cold. Lumbermen who once thought missionary work was a joke now beg the preachers to come to their camp. In several towns of northern Minnesota where but a few. years ago law and decency were made sport of, the saloons were open day and night and the lumbermen were drugged, robbed, and even put to death, law and order are now respected, and men in the camps are praising the change. “ But,” says Mr. Higgins, “ this missionary work has only begun. We must go forward and develop it. We should have at least ten men in Minnesota and scores of them on the great Pacific coast. Everywhere the logging companies are willing that the missionaries WITH THE LUMBER-JACKS 75 should go to their camps, and everywhere the mission¬ aries find a warm welcome among the men/’ East and west, north and south, from Maine to Cali¬ fornia, from Washington to Florida, we have found these “ Comrades From Other Lands.” Children of the same Father in heaven, may we realize our kinship and give our sympathy freely, generously. “ For one is your mas¬ ter, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.” As we think of what they are doing for us and of what we are doing for them, let us plan, not so much to rwork for them as to work with them, fighting in a common cause, to make every corner of our country a part of the Kingdom of God, true to the teachings of Him who was “ all men’s Comrade/’ Jesus the Son of Man. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HOME MISSIONS JOHN T. FARIS Author of "Men Who Made Good ” The Alaskan Pathfinder The Story of Sheldon Jackson for Boys. i2mo, cloth, net $1.00. The story of Sheldon Jackson will appear irresistibly to every boy. Action from the time he was, as an infant, rescued from a fire to his years’ of strenuous rides through the Rickies and his long years’ of service in Alaska, per¬ meate every page of the book. Mr. Faris, with a sure hand, tells the story of this apostle of the Western Indians in clear- cut, incisive chapters which will hold the boy’s attention from first to last. JOSEPH B. CLARK , D.D. The Story of - ; - 1 -■ American Home Missions Leavening the Nation: New and Revised Edition. International Leaders’ Library. i2mo, cloth (postage ioc.), net 50c. This standard history of the Home Mission work of all denominations in America, has been thoroughly revised and brought up-to-date. MARY CLARK BARNES and DR. LEMUEL C. BARNES The New America Home Mission Study Course. Illustrated, i2mo, cloth, net 50c. (post 7c.) ; paper 30c. (post. 5c.). This, the regular text-book for the coming year is on the subject of immigration. The author is eminently fitted for writing on this theme as she has been a worker among immi¬ grants, and has given much time to studying the problem. LAURA GEROULD CRAIG America, God’s Melting Pot Home Mission Study Course. Illustrated, i2mo, paper, net 25c. (postage 4c.). The subject chosen for study this year. Immigration, covers so wide a field that it was thought best to prepare a supple¬ mental text book from an entirely different standpoint. The author has written a “parable study” which deals more with lessons and agencies than with issues and processes. LEILA ALLEN DIMOCK Comrades from Other Lands Home Mission Junior Text Book. Illustrated, i2mo, paper, net 25c. (postage 4c.). This book is complementary to the last volume in this course of study, Dr. Henry’s SOME IMMIGRANT NEIGH¬ BORS which treated of the lives and occupations of foreign¬ ers in our cities. This latter tells what the immigrants are doing in country industries. Teachers of children of from twelve to sixteen will find here material to enlist the sym¬ pathies and hold the interest of their scholars. HOME MISSIONS LEMUEL C. BARNES, D.D. Elemental Forces in Home Missions i2mo, cloth, net 75c. By the author of that popular missionary text-book, “Two Thousand Years of Missions Before Carey.” Some of the most important issues connected with the work of Christian¬ izing America are presented with a breadth, a clearness, a force and a conviction that will give the reader a new vision of the Home Mission opportunity and a new sense of his responsibility. JAMES F. LOVE , D D. Ass. Cor Sec Horn Mission Board Southern Baptist Convention The Mission of Our Nation T2mo, cloth, net $1.00. “Doctor Dove shows himself at once a historian and a prophet as he opens the book of the past and points out its suggestion for the future. The reader is irresistibly carried forward to the conclusions of the author. Interesting, illum¬ inating and inspiring .”—Baptist Teacher. MARY CLARET BARNES Early Stories and Songs for New Students ( of English Illustrated, i6mo, cloth, net 60c.; paper, net 35c. Dr. Edward, A. Steiner says: “Not only practical but it affords easy transition to the higher things. The Bible is a wonderful primer, simple, yet wonderfully profound. I am glad that it is the basis of your system of teaching English to foreigners.” HOME MISSIONS—TEXT BOOKS BRUCE KINNEY, D.D. Mormonism: The Islam of America Home Mission Study Course. Illustrated, i2mo, cloth, net 50c.; paper, net 30c. Dr. Kinney treats the subject in ajudiciou9 way, avoid¬ ing denunciation or undue criticism. The facts of Mormon history, doctrine and life are woven into a readable story that is sure to hold the attention, JOHN R. HENRY Some Immigrant Neighbors The Hchne Mission Junior Text Book. Illustrated, i2mo, cloth, net 40c.; paper, net 25c. The author is the pastor of “The Church of All Nations” in New York City. He writes of many nationalities from his own experience. Through his sympathetic portrayal the child student will be drawn toward a neighborly feeling for his little brothers of foreign speech. ) . i in j leo ogical Seminary 1 10 12 01235 Libraries 534 THE LIBRARY STORE #47-0207 .