Chapter XX: My Experience as a Labourer in the Muscle Market of the South

_Appleton's Magazine_ published my first serious attempt at fiction. It was a short story entitled, "Two Social Pariahs."

The cry of peonage was in the air and I arranged with _Appleton's Magazine_ for a series of articles on the subject. Dressed as a labourer I went to the muscle market of New York and got hired. To do this I had to assume a foreign accent and look as slovenly as possible. With a picturesque contingent of Hungarians, Finns, Swedes and Greeks, I was drafted for the iron mines of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company. The mines are near Bessemer, Ala. At every turn of the road south we were herded and handled like cattle.

It was a big, black porter who led us into the car at Portsmouth, Va. I was the leader of the contingent, and the porter addressed us for the most part by signs, and when he spoke at all he called me "Johnny." When inside, he arranged us in our seats, putting his hands on some of our shoulders to press us down into them. I did not realize that I was in a Southern state until I saw a big yellow card in this car marked "Coloured." Then I knew instantly that we were in a Jim Crow car. A coloured woman sat next to the window in my seat and by her look and little toss of the head and a quick nervous movement she seemed to say, "What are you doing here?"

When the train pulled out of the depot, I stepped up to the porter and said:

"Haven't you a law in Virginia on the separation of the races."

The big black fellow grinned.

"Dere sho' is, boss--but you ain't no races. You is jest Dagoes, ain't you?"

At Atlanta we changed cars and were again driven into the Jim Crow car. This time I made a more intelligent attempt to solve my race problem. The conductor, faultlessly dressed in broadcloth and covered with gold lace, strode into our car with the air of an admiral of the fleet. He went straight through the car, collecting the block ticket for our gang from the boss, and as he returned I stepped into the aisle in front of him, blocking his passage.

"Pardon me, sir," I said, "isn't there a law in Georgia on the separation of the races?"

Without a word, he removed the glasses from his nose, stared at me for a moment, then turned sharply, walked to the end of the car, removed the card which read "Coloured" and reversed it. It then read "White." Then he came back through the car slowly, staring at me as he passed but without uttering a word.

Our particular destination was "Muckers Camp" at Readers. A group of three buildings on the brow of a hill--the hill where the blacks live. The first of these buildings is a kitchen and dining room, the second is a big dormitory and the third is a wash-house. This was our new home. The dormitory was originally intended for a series of small rooms but the work was arrested before completion. The uprights marking the divisions of the rooms were still standing--bare and uncovered. The floor of the big dormitory was littered with rubbish--miners' cast-off clothing, shoes, broken lamps, and in a corner there was a junk-heap of broken bedsteads, slats, army blankets and sodden mattresses. We were told to make ourselves "at home." There was room enough and plenty of bedding. All we had to do was to fish for what we needed and put it in order. Everything was red--red with ore that men carried out of the mines on their bodies.

The junk heap in the corner played an important part in the movements of my gang. The thought of having to sleep in the sodden stuff chilled me to the bones, but I kept silent. Whatever the previous condition of the men had been, they felt as I did as they pulled their bedding out piece by piece. They had gone to spend the winter in the mines of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; they knew the work, conditions and pay; they had refused to be bribed on the way down, but as they tugged at the junk, a change came over them! They swore in half a dozen languages--they gritted their teeth and vowed that they wouldn't be treated like pigs.

We went to the wash-house and the outlook was less encouraging. There was a long, narrow trough in the centre. It was half full of red ore. The floor was wet and covered with ore, rags, old papers and other rubbish. There were compartments intended for shower-baths, but there again the work had been arrested and was incomplete. We washed, made our beds, ate dinner and proceeded to the company store to be fitted out.

Each man was furnished with a number. By that number he was to be known while in the company's employ. Each man showed his number and drew what he needed--overalls, lamps, and heavy boots. There was nothing niggardly in the credit. The deeper the debt the tighter the grip on the debtor. The goods cost just one hundred per cent. more than anywhere else. The company paid wages once a month. If a labourer borrowed of his own within that time, he paid ten per cent. on the loan.

As we came back from the store, the miners were just leaving the mines and it was interesting to see them gaze into our faces and address us in Russian, Hungarian, Swedish and various other languages. It was one of the excitements of camp life--to inspect and classify the newcomers.

One of the men had a wheezy accordion and he relieved the monotony of the evening with some German airs. The big shed was unlighted, save as each man was his own lamp-post. Each made his own bed by the light of the lamp on his cap. As he undressed, the cap was the last article to be set aside and the extinguishing of the smoky, flickering blaze the last act of the night.

As the first streak of the gray dawn came in through the bare windows, four of our gang dressed and deliberately marched out of the camp--never to return.

The first number in the programme of a "mucker's" toilet is to adjust his cap with his lamp in it, trimmed and burning. The second is to light his pipe; then he dresses.

It was half-past five and still dark, when those nude, shaggy men with heads ablaze with smoky, flickering lamps, began to move around. They looked grotesque--unearthly--denizens of some underground pit. They were good-humoured and full of boisterous laughter.

A breakfast of pork, beans, potatoes, bread and coffee--plenty of each--and we went off with dinner pails over the hill to the valley, where five tall, smoking chimneys marked the entrances to as many mines.

Each mine has a complete outfit of men and machinery, and a certain number of chambers or pockets in which, with blast and hammer and hand, the red hills are made to disgorge their treasures of iron ore.

Three of us perched ourselves on the rear end of the "skip"--a big iron-ore disgorger--and began the half-mile descent. It was a 45 per cent. grade, and the skip, at the end of a powerful wire cable, went down by jerks. One of my companions was Franz, the Hungarian, the other was a German. The big square mouth of the mine became smaller and smaller as we bumped into the bowels of the earth. In a few minutes it looked like a small window-pane, and then disappeared altogether and we were left in the darkness.

Each mine is like a little town. It has a main street and side alleys--"pockets," they are called. There are "live" and "dead" pockets--the dead are the worked out.

At the first of the live pockets the skip was stopped by some invisible hand and we clambered over the side to a platform where a foreman met and conducted us to the task of the day.

The mine was filled with red dust. We could see but a few feet ahead of us. The lamps on men's brows looked like fire-flies dancing in the red mist. There was a sound of rushing water and the _chug, chug_ of the pumps. As we waded ankle-deep through a water alley, we heard the warning yells of a foreman. A charge of dynamite was about to burst and the men were flying out of danger. We were whisked into a cleft for safety. Half a dozen old miners were squeezed in beside us. Our scarcely soiled caps told the story of our newness and the old hands watched us closely.

Boom! The hills shivered like the deck of a warship as she discharges a broadside. Franz shivered too. His eyes bulged and he stared, loose-jawed, at the men around us, who laughed at his fright.

The explosion was in our alley; it had torn up the car-tracks like strips of macaroni; it was the salute of dynamite to our soft, flabby muscles, to our white caps and new overalls; it was a stick of concentrated power throwing down the gauntlet to men in the raw.

We had a foreman who superintended our compartment, "a driller," who with a steam drill sat all day boring holes for dynamite, and we were the "muckers"--miner's helpers--who carried away with muscular power the effects of the explosion. Each alley had similar crews.

"Mule boy!" I roared with all my vocal power into what looked like an ugly rent in the rocks. A moment later, I saw a glimmer of light, then a mule shot up out of a hole and a black boy brought up the rear, clinging to the tail of "Emma," the mule, our sure-footed locomotive.

We were handed a huge sledge-hammer each and the work began. My hammer bounded off the rocks as if it were an air ball. It bounded for a dozen heavy strokes.

"Turn that rock over and look for the grain!" the foreman shouted in my ear. Then he took the hammer, turned the huge boulder over on its side, struck it twice or thrice and it flew into splinters.

We acquired the knack of things quickly, and instinctively struck the working pace. It was the limit of human strength and endurance. My jacket came off first, then my overalls, then my shirt, leaving trousers and undershirt only. The others followed suit. The sweat oozed out of every pore of my body. We smashed, filled and ran out the full cars. We worked silently, doggedly and at top speed. Several hundred men were doing likewise in other pockets; they were less bloody, perhaps, but the work was the same and they did it without knowing that it was brutally hard. There was a halt of fifteen minutes for dinner. Then we went at it again. Our best fell short of the demand. For every car of ore blasted, the foreman got fifty cents and for running out each car, we got twenty cents--a little over six cents each.

"---- ---- your souls to h--l," the foreman shouted. "Why don't you get a move on you ---- hey?"

We moved a little faster.

"You muckers ain't goin' t' get ten cars out t'day if ye don't mend yer licks!"

We "mended our licks."

He looked like a wild beast. Short of stature, but his arms were hardened and under the red skin the muscles were hard as whip-cords and taut as a drum. His eyebrows were heavy and bushy and over his strong chest grew shaggy masses of black hair. Our car slipped the track once and when he heard the smash he came thundering along, ripping out a string of oaths as he came. Putting his powerful body to the lever, he lifted the car almost alone. As he did so, his lamp came in contact with my hand. Unable to let go, I screamed to him to move. As he did so, he saw the seared flesh.

"Too bad! Too bad!" he said, as he dropped the truck. I gazed into his eyes.

"Look here!" I said, "if you will look as human as that again, you may burn the other hand!"

The human moles who empty these pockets of ore are inured. Life down there is normal to them. After a few years' work, the skin becomes calloused and tough. The hands become claws or talons--broken and disfigured. The muckers laughed at us. They saw we were concerned about trifles. Bloody sweat and hot oil held the red dust around us like a tight-fitting garment. Our scanty clothing was glued to our bodies. Our shoes were filled with water, but that was a luxury--it was cool.

What a hades of noise and dust! The continual noise and clatter of the pumps, the rattle of the drillers, the hissing of steam and the ear-splitting roar of the dynamite explosions are matters that one gets accustomed to in time. The frenzied desire to get cars filled and run out leaves little time for novel sensations--for that, brute force _alone_ is needed.

At the end of the first day we had filled and run out ten cars. Our pay for that was sixty-six cents apiece. During the same time, Philo, the mule boy, made seventy-five cents and Emma--she had earned what would enable her to return to-morrow to repeat the work of to-day.

About five o'clock in the afternoon we were sandwiched into the big iron skip with a score of others--black and white. Eight hours had taken our newness away. We were as others in colour and condition. We looked into their faces and felt their hot breath. Then a signal was given and the panting, squirming mass was jerked to the surface.

As we passed over the hill to the camp I was in an ecstasy. The sense of relief under the open sky was intense. Others seemed to have it--for they joked and laughed boisterously over trifles as we went "home."

Seven of us together went to the big wash-house. It was rather crowded. I marvelled that nobody was using the shower-baths. I soaped myself, stood beneath the big iron water-pipe and waited, but there was no response. There was a loud laugh, then a miner asked:

"Air ye posin' for yer photo, mister?"

"No. What's the matter with the water?"

"Fits, Buttie--it's got fits!"

There was plenty of food, of a kind. The supper, at the close of the day was a brief function, but brutal as it was brief. It was something of a shock, the first night we were in camp, but at the close of my first day's work I found myself on a level with the grossest. The finer instincts were blunted or gone and I was in the clutch of a hunger like that of the jungle, where might and cunning rule. At a signal from the cook, we rushed in, crushed by main force into a seat, seized whatever was nearest and began. Scarcely a word was spoken--heads down, hands and jaws at top speed. The disgusting spectacle lasted but a few minutes, then up and out to smoke and talk.

Beside me sat a strong, powerfully built German boy, who joked about the age of the pork for supper.

"What you guff about?" the burly steward asked.

"Schmell, py gee--its tick mit bad schmell!"

"Vell, you shut your ---- maut or I smash your ---- head, see?"

The boy laughed, then the steward removed his plate and refused to give any more. Nobody took any notice. We were too busy and too brutally selfish to interfere. The steward was the camp bully and the men were afraid of him. They must not even laugh at his provisions. We had pork for breakfast, we took pork chops to the mines for dinner, and the staple article--the standby--of every supper was pork. Pigs in Alabama are like turnips in Scotland--there are no property rights in them. They breed and litter in the tall dog-fennel; they root around the shanties and cover the landscape.

"Who owns these pigs?" I asked old Ransom Pope, a Negro.

"One an' anoder!" he said.

The gullies and the weeds were full of them and the steward found them easy and cheap feeding.

"You come yere for breakfast to-morrow an' I smash your dam head!" the steward said to the boy, as we left the dining room. There was no reply. Each man went his way. They were tired--too tired to think. Though a stranger to even the taste of liquor, I had an intense craving for it and it seemed as if I had used it all my life. An hour after supper, I lay down on my sodden pile and went to sleep.

I was awakened next morning by a Norwegian mucker who was organizing a strike over the incident of the tainted pork. Five minutes later, every man in the shed was around the stove in an impromptu indignation meeting. It was agreed that Max, the German boy, should go in first; if the steward put him out, we were all to leave with him and refuse to work. He was allowed to take breakfast but was refused a dinner pail. We dropped ours and marched to the office in a body. An investigation was made and it was discovered that the steward was feeding us on his neighbour's pork and charging it to the company. He was discharged and we went back to the camp to make merry for the rest of the forenoon. The fun, for most of them, consisted of an extra demand on their physical force--rough horse-play, leap-frog and wrestling. One man went to town for extra stimulants. Another, a big Swede, stripped nude, drained at a single draught a bottle of whiskey and lay down to sleep himself drunk and sober again before his next call to the pits. At the close of the day he lay there--a big, shaggy animal, wallowing.

The mines were shut down on Sunday and we had an opportunity to look around. Though a place of one thousand inhabitants, it has no post-office. There are ditches but no drains; wide, deep gullies, but no streets. The moon shines there in her season, but there are no street lamps. The hogs are somewhat tame and we fed them as we went along. There is a church but it's for black folks--it's essential to them. The whites fare not so well. If they want one, they travel for it. They do likewise for a school, for the little school beside the church is for coloured children. The only "modern convenience" was an ancient style of hydrant, around which the children were organizing fire companies and extinguishing imaginary fires.

After visiting the mule boy in Rat Hollow on Sunday, I returned to the camp. The men were lounging around the stove, smoking, and exchanging experiences. In one corner, a German sailor was playing his wheezy accordion, and in another, to a group of Slavs, a Russian soldier was singing a love song. It was my last day with the muckers. Many of my gang had already gone--the rest would follow. It wasn't a matter of wages or hours--it was a question of muck. Once in it, men lived, moved, and had their being in it, but even the most brutalized quailed at the junk pile in the corner of the shed.

The sun was setting behind the red hills. Save for a long, yellow streak just above the horizon, the sky was a mass of purple billows. The yellow changed to amber and later to a blood red. Then rays of sun-fire shot up and splashed the purple billows; the purple and gold later gave place to black clouds through which the stars came one by one, while the muckers were settling down for the night.

It seemed at first as if I would have to commit some crime to get admission to the stockade where the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company had their largest convict labour force. I was seedy-looking--my beard had grown and I was still in blue shirt and overalls. I approached the chaplain--told him my story and gained admission to his night school; and for three weeks moved in and out among the socially damned of that horrible stockade.

In that time I got the facts of the life there and I became so depressed by what I saw that I had to fight daily to keep off a sense of hate that pressed in upon me every time I went into that atmosphere.

Here were eight hundred men, seven hundred of them coloured. They had committed crimes against persons and property. The state of Alabama hired them out to the corporation at so much a head and the corporation proceeded, with state aid, to make their investment pay.

The men were underfed and overworked and in addition were exploited in the most shameful manner by officials from the top to the bottom.

For the slightest infraction of the rules they were flogged like galley slaves. Women were flogged as well as men. What the lash and the labour left undone tuberculosis finished. Unsanitary conditions, rotten sheds, sent many of them into eternity, where they were better off.

They were classified according to their ability to dig coal, not according to the crimes committed.

From the stockade I went to a lumber camp where some officials had been found guilty of peonage.

I got a job as a teamster and took my place in the camp among the labourers as if I had spent my life at it.

In this way I got at the facts of how and why men had been decoyed from New York and imprisoned in the forests.

I was so much at home in my work and so disguised that no one ever for a moment suspected me. I obtained photographs of the bosses, the bloodhounds and the camp box cars in which the lumber Jacks lived.

Several times around a bonfire of pine knots I entertained the men of the camp with stories of travel, history and romance.

If I had been discovered, if the purpose of my presence had been known I would have been shot like a dog; for life is as cheap in a Southern lumber field as in any part of the world.

From the lumber camp I went to one of the big turpentine camps where conditions are as primitive and as inhuman as in the stockades.

My next and last job in the South was punching logs in Pensacola harbour for a dollar and six "bits" a day. There I got material for several stories of peons who had escaped from the woods.

While in Pensacola I made a visit, one Sunday morning, to the city jail and asked permission to address the prisoners. The jailer, of course, wanted to know what an unkempt labourer had to say to his charges.

In order to convince him I had to deliver an exegesis before the desk! The cells were iron cages with stone floors.

A young Englishman, who had just landed after a long sea voyage the night before, was the first man to whom I talked. He claimed to have been drugged and robbed in a saloon. The fact of his incarceration was a small thing to him; what made him swear was the condition of his cage. The excrements of probably half a dozen of his predecessors in the cell lay around him, nauseating and suffocating him. Fire shot from his eyes as he pointed to it. He was bitter, sarcastic, sneering, and with evident and abundant cause.

Whatever I had to say to the men and women in that dungeon that morning was driven from my mind and my lips.

The young man pushed all the resentment of his soul over into mine! I spent that Sunday in working out a plan by which I could help Pensacola to clean up this social ulcer.

There was a Tourist Club there and I offered to lecture for them. It was arranged for the following Sunday afternoon. I called on the mayor and he promised to preside. I interviewed several aldermen and they promised to attend. I lectured for forty minutes on my experiences as a labourer in the camps of the South, and for ten minutes at the close described what I had seen in the city jail.

It was a somewhat heroic method of treatment, and I did not remain long enough to see the effect, but I at least deprived them of the plea of ignorance.

I found in Florida two Government officials who had done splendid work in behalf of labour. I mean the labourers who were decoyed by false promises and brutally abused on their arrival in the camps. They were both modest men--men unlikely to enter politics for personal advancement. I cut my articles out of the magazine and sent them to President Roosevelt, calling his attention to the conditions and commending these men to his notice. The result was that they were both promoted to positions where their usefulness was increased and the cause of labour considerably helped.