Part 10

“Do you know that Mr. Frick has been shot and may die?”

I did not know it, for I had not seen a newspaper since leaving Algona, and my intercourse had been with farmers whose news reaches them by the weekly press,

It was an exceedingly tragic climax to the situation at Homestead, and not without influence in determining the sympathies of the Western farmers with the issues involved there. It had been amazing to me to discover how keen was the interest taken in the strike all along my route, and it was not a little significant, I thought, to find everywhere a strong indignation against the use of a private police force in accomplishing ends legal in themselves and fully provided for by law and usage. So far in the struggle the feeling of the farmers was with the men. Beyond that they appeared uncertain. There was a question of fact to begin with. Did the cut affect more the hands who were working for a dollar and a half a day or the skilled workmen who were reported to get, some of them as much as fifteen dollars? Until this was clear, there could be but speculation.

Most interesting of all, I had found their attitude toward the question that was widely raised of a right the workmen were said to have in the property at Homestead, apart from their wages, on the ground of their having created its value. Here was the real issue of modern industrialism, and on it I found the farmers conservative, to say the least.

The American farmer is a landed proprietor with a gift for logical tendencies that does him credit. His chiefest aim is to maintain, if possible, his economic independence, and a doctrine that would give to his hired man an ultimate claim to ownership in his farm is not one that is likely soon to meet with wide acceptance among his class.

It was with the physician that I talked these matters over, and I was interested to find my experience confirmed by that of so expert an observer, whose chances were so good.

Very reluctantly I parted from him at his door and made in the direction of Neola. Owing to rains that delayed me on Thursday, I did not enter Neola until the middle of the afternoon of that day, and there I did not stop in passing, but pressed on to Underwood, where I spent the night.

Friday was clear again and hot, but the roads were difficult, and I had to desert them for the lines of the St. Paul and Rock Island railways, that parallel each other side by side for several miles into Council Bluffs.

For the past day I had not had a single offer of a job. The farmers, as I approached the town, seemed either less in need of men or less willing to take up with a chance wayfarer. No doubt I should have had no difficulty had I set about a search for work. Certainly I could not have fared better than I did for dinner at a farm, where I was allowed to lend a hand with a load of hay. And after dinner, when the farmer and I talked together for an hour, I found in him the same contentment which struck me as so general among Iowa farmers.

But my letters were in the Post-office at Omaha, and I felt impatient of delay until I should get them. I did not get them on that day, however, nor for several days to come. In Council Bluffs I met the unlooked-for barrier of a toll-bridge across the Missouri. Five cents would give me a right of way, but I had only one, and must, therefore, look for work. I counted myself very fortunate when, at nightfall, I got a job in a livery-stable.

I had crossed Iowa, and Mr. Ross’s promise had been abundantly fulfilled. On any day of the march I could have found a dozen places for the asking, and scarcely a day had passed that I had not repeatedly been asked to go to work. I should have thought this a condition peculiar to the harvest time, had not many of the farmers told me that, while their need is greatest then, it is so constant always that no good man need ever be long without work among them.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A SECTION-HAND ON THE UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A SECTION-HAND ON THE UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY

It cost five cents to go from Council Bluffs to Omaha in the summer of 1892. That was the toll of a foot passenger in crossing the bridge which, spanning the Missouri, joined the two cities. It was a reasonable toll, I dare say, and paid probably no more than a fair return on the capital invested in the bridge, but it was five cents and I had only one. One dingy copper coin, with its Indian head and laurel wreath, was all that was left of the savings from my last job. I must, therefore, find work in Council Bluffs, and the letters which had been waiting for me in Omaha must wait a little longer. But I felt fagged, for I had reached the end of a six days’ walk of some 200 miles, so I took a seat on a bench in the shade in the public square near a fountain, whose play was soothing in the heat of a midsummer afternoon.

I thought regretfully then of the farmer with whom I dined at noon that day, and with whom I might have remained as a hired man. Besides, I remembered with some concern two men on foot who met me on the outskirts of Council Bluffs.

“Where are you from, partner?” one of them asked, with some bluster in his manner.

“I’ve just come down through the State from Algona,” I replied.

“Is there any work out the way you came?”

“Lots of it,” I assured him.

“Well, there ain’t none the way you’re goin’. Me and me pal is wore out lookin’ for a job in Omaha and Council Bluffs.”

I had come 1,500 miles as a wage-earner, and I had 1,500 yet to go before I should reach the Pacific, but not yet had it been hard to find work of some sort, except when I chose to stay in a crowded city in winter. The anxiety that I felt in this instance proved groundless, for when, in the cool of the evening, I looked for employment I found it at the third application, and I went to bed that night a hostler in a livery-stable at a wage of twenty dollars a month and board at a “Fifth Avenue” hotel.

Ten dollars less twelve cents, which were due for the hire of books at a stationer’s shop, were clear gain at the end of two weeks’ service in the stable. But the necessity of writing up notes and of answering many letters, besides the allurements of a public library, kept me for several days in Omaha, so that my cash had dwindled, when, one afternoon about the middle of August, I left the city, with the broad State of Nebraska as the next step of the journey.

It was natural to follow the Union Pacific Railway. It takes its course westward through the State, and is paralleled by a main-travelled road that connects the frequent settlements along the line. Just out of Omaha the railroad makes a southern bend, and I avoided this by following the directer course of the highway that led next morning to a meeting with the rails at Elkhorn. The going there was of the plainest. The railway followed the northern bank of the Platte River and the road followed the rail. If the day was wet, I left the road and walked the sleepers; if the day was dry, I walked the road, but always I was within easy hail of a lift, and so fell in with many an interesting farmer and was saved many miles of walking.

It was late in the afternoon of a rainy day that there chanced a lift of the most timely. From low, heavy clouds had been falling since early morning a misty rain that almost floated in the warm, still air. For a hundred yards together I might find a tolerable path along the turf at the edge of the road. Then, as the mud grew deeper, I took to the rails and kept them, until the monotony of the sleepers drove me to the mire again. I had seen scarcely a soul that day except the fleeting figures on the trains and an occasional bedraggled section-hand who looked sullenly at me, barely deigning a salutation as I passed. It seemed hardly worth while to be abroad, but I had found it generally best to stick to the road when I could, and I was beginning now to think of a shelter for the night and trying to find some satisfaction in having covered more than twenty miles since morning.

The rumble of a heavy wagon began to sound down the road; and when I could hear the splash of the horses’ hoofs near by, I was delighted to catch the call of the driver, as he asked me to a seat at his side. He was a farm-hand, young and muscular and slouching, as he sat stoop-shouldered, with the lines held loosely in his bare hands, while the rain dripped from a felt hat upon the shining surface of his rubber coat.

Why he had asked me to ride I could not clearly see, for he scarcely turned his lacklustre eyes upon me when I climbed up beside him, and he seemed not in the least anxious to talk.