Kitabı oku: «My Life», sayfa 16

CHAPTER XXII
NEW YORK AGAIN

Taking up life anew in New York City, after many years abroad, is not an easy game. In my case it was particularly disagreeable, because for a while I had a homesick feeling for Europe, and I suppose for my particular house in Berlin. I shall never forget the uncomfortable feeling I had while my ship was docking as to the outcome of myself and my affairs in this new country – my country, it is true, but to me a country which I knew very little about from the beginner's point of view. That I was a beginner, psychologically and financially, is pretty plain from what I have before said.

I had one consolation. It was a letter from L. F. Loree, then general manager of the Pennsylvania lines west of Pittsburg, asking me to go to Pittsburg and see him on a matter of business, the nature of which his letter did not reveal. There had been a previous letter from this gentleman, received in Stettin, Germany, just as I was sailing for St. Petersburg, suggesting a meeting in Pittsburg. This was a number of weeks before my final departure from Germany for the United States. At that particular time I did not give the letter its due attention. Russia seemed still to hold out promises which I thought more attractive than those located in other parts of the world.

On arriving in New York City in 1898, with fifty dollars in my pocket and no more in sight, I naturally bethought myself of the letter received from Mr. Loree. I notified him of my modest home-coming, and said that I would be glad to hear more about the business for me that he had in mind. His reply was to the effect that I should meet him in Pittsburg, and would there learn about the matter which he was minded to take up with me. I spent three days in New York City at the home of a friend. During this time I was "put up" at a certain club by a friend whom I had learned to know through the writing business. At this club I met various editors, writers, and, I suppose, publishers. I was so elated with my sudden elevation into club standing in the writing business in New York City, that I immediately went back from the club to the home of my host, and told him in glee what a fine beginning I had made. Neither he nor his wife seemed to care very much for my sudden rise in the literary world in New York, via the club end of it. I remember that they looked at each other very significantly on my telling them with happiness how I had been so happily received by the writers' craft.

That look made it very pleasant for me to consider other pastures, and the invitation to proceed to Pittsburg was accepted with alacrity. Arriving there, I had a few of my fifty dollars left. But there was no immediate prospect of their remaining in my pocket.

It is not always easy, even though invited to meet him and expecting to meet him, to find the general manager of a railroad. In my case, what happened? I found my man out on the road, seeing to it that certain repairs were made, and that he personally should know that they were made quickly, and that I must wait a while, perhaps two or three hours, perhaps longer. Pittsburg and its gloom did not make any plainer to me, during this waiting spell, what I was in Pittsburg for. I remember that I went to a hotel, and tried to write an article on that poor miserable creature, the Russian workingman. In the course of a few hours I was notified by telegram that I was to proceed to where the repairs were being made, and there make the general manager's acquaintance. I followed out these instructions, and I learned to know a man to whom I am indebted for my start in life at home after those wonderland years in Europe and Asia. I remember that I met my benefactor in a signal tower where he was patiently waiting for confirmation that his instructions had been carried out. I remember how he looked at me. No chief of police has ever "sized me up" the way that general manager did. He looked into my personality as it is not pleasant to have any one's personality looked into, unless he believes that he is doing the right thing. This is only a small incident in our acquaintance, but I have never forgotten it.

Before long the repairs were completed, the required confirmation of instructions delivered was received, and Mr. Loree and I returned to Pittsburg in his car. On the car not a word was said about the business that he had in mind, and I was careful enough not to disturb a man who had probably attended to ten things to my one during that day.

In Pittsburg, after supper at the club, we went to the theater and there saw a light play. Naturally, I could not help guessing about the business that the general manager had in mind for me. The play over, we returned to the club, and there, for the first time, I learned what the gentleman wanted.

As I remember his words now, he said to me: "The tramp trouble in the United States has interested me as a railroad man. I take it that it has interested you temperamentally and, perhaps, as a student of economics.

"It occurred to me, on taking hold of this railroad property as a general manager, that I would see whether I could not help to eliminate the tramp trouble for the railroad as well as for the public. It was not a question in my mind about the possibility of the tramp being as bad a man as some have painted him, nor was it the question of doing the honest but unfortunate and penniless train-rider an injury. The thing I had in mind to do, and have tried to do, was to clear the property intrusted to my hands of that riffraff population which has been infesting American railroads for so many years.

"I feel like this. Taken any way you like it, a railroad in a State is one of its biggest citizens. My position as general manager did not call upon me to exercise the theoretical notion of a railroad's position as a citizen in a State. Nevertheless, I said to myself: 'If I clean up my property as regards this riffraff population I am possibly contributing to the fulfillment of my citizenship.'"

At these words I looked at my possible employer pretty carefully. I have never had any reason to believe that as a citizen he has not struggled to do what, in his mind, seemed to be the right thing. He then and there made an impression upon me which I shall never forget. Mind you, I had just come over to this country. It was my business to find something that would make money for me as soon as possible. Mind you, I had gone to a man who knew and managed thirty thousand men.

He said to me: "What I wish you would do is to go over the property under my management, and make such a report as you see fit about the tramp conditions."

I said to him: "What do you think that will be worth?"

He said: "Well, what do you think it will be worth?"

I needed the money, there was not much more in sight at that time, whether I went on tramp or not anyhow, and I replied: "Well, I suppose that ten dollars a day would be an even price."

The general manager replied: "I think that's fair. I suppose you know how to proceed?"

"I think that I can get back in the old line without much trouble," I returned.

The general manager said: "Go ahead, and find out whatever you can. Whether the police force that I have instituted has been successful or not in stopping the tramp evil, I do not know. I say that I do not know because I cannot possibly be personally on every spot, covering five States, including thirty thousand men. It is pretty hard to keep track of all that you order to be done. I am speaking to you purely from the point of view of a railroad manager. It's pretty hard to run a railroad as you would like to have it run. This tramp business, this riffraff, this slum population that I find on my lines is, of course, a detail in the work that has been set before me.

"In my endeavor to keep my lines as clean as possible, not only as a citizen, but also as a railroader, I have tried to build up a railroad police. The States through which my lines run protect me only incidentally. I find that when your friends, the tramps, are arrested by town or village officials they are easily turned loose. I wanted to know how the situation could be changed, and I proceeded to look into the matter. The result was that I made up my mind that the railroad company must protect itself. I found that certain men, called detectives, were, at times, endeavoring to keep tramps off trains on our lines. I found, furthermore, that these men, or detectives, were not attending to their duty as I believe it should be attended to.

"Consequently I got to wondering how this matter could be better attended to. I looked over the expense accounts for police purposes, and found that our people were paying what seemed to me an exorbitant sum for very poor service. It seemed to me that police matters on a railroad, on account of the negligence on the part of villages and towns, should be organized and given a standing, which, on account of our lackadaisical procedure against crime in this country, was justified.

"You will find on our property a certain number of qualified policemen. Perhaps I should say 'patrolmen.' We do not use the word detective on this property. They are divided up according to divisions, and the moral deportment of the different communities in which they are placed. My idea has been to try to police our property just as a city is policed.

"What I should like to have you do is to go over our property and see whether our police force has been successful in ridding our lines, and, to some extent, the communities which they touch, from tramp immigration. How do you feel about the matter?"

Here was a problem which led right back into all that land of Wanderlust which I supposed that I had given up in so far as it applied to tramp life. However, as so many well-known people say: "Beggars cannot be choosers," I undertook the job of finding out for the general manager exactly what the tramps had to say about his lines as protected by his police. Eighteen years before this interview, the general manager's lines, to my own knowledge, were so littered up with tramps, and tramp camps that the Fort Wayne road in particular then was known as an "easy" road to beat between Chicago and Pittsburg. It was as bad as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which in those days was called "The Dope."

These roads were ridden promiscuously by all kinds of men, women and children who did not pay fare. When they got into a box car they thought much nonsense. The things that were done and said among all these people at that time would make too scandalizing reading now. If there are slums in our cities, there are no greater slums anywhere in the world, barring no crime, passion, or idiosyncracy, than were found on the "Dope" and the Fort Wayne roads in my tramp days.

I looked over the general manager's property. Dressed as a tramp, acting as a tramp, living and sleeping as a tramp, I surrounded his lines until I knew what the tramp world had to say about his railroad police idea. I found wherever I went, in Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati, Wheeling, or Pittsburg, that tramps said: "There are easier roads to beat than the Fort Wayne."

It was hard work to go back into tramp life. I had some hard knocks, as regards storms and other misadventures in various places. Yet, with it all, it brought back to me a number of remembrances of earlier tramp days.

At the end of one month on the "Road" I went to the general manager and told him that I had no desire to ride his trains – that there were so many other trains and roads that were easier. I believed that, in order to complete my investigations, if he cared to have me proceed further, I should have a pass, good on every movable thing that he had on his property. We discussed this matter in some detail. Eventually, the general manager consented to my proposition, and I was given a pass, good over all his lines, and I had with me the moral support of his position.

I tackled the tramp problem from a new point of view. It was my privilege to ride on practically every passenger train, every freight train, and on all engines that it should be my fate to meet. The general manager also gave me a letter instructing his employees to let me pass. I now know that it puzzled the general manager's police force to comprehend my compromising position on the road. The police force said: "Who is this young fellow out here looking us up?"

I was called to order one night, in Ohio, by a captain of the newly instituted police force, for riding on a caboose of a freight train. I was getting off the caboose to find out about something which was a matter of detail at the time, and had got back to the steps of the caboose, when the captain stepped up to me and said: "What are you doing on this train?" I looked at him. He looked at me. We then and there decided that there was no particular disagreement between us. But I have to say that during the second month of my investigations for the general manager, his police force could not make out why I was on the property with all my credentials, and my confusing diminutive form and face. One of my best friends to-day, who was then at the head of the police, was interested in my proceedings.

As an illustration of how men keep track of each other, he had his men keep track of me. At the same time, I think he must have realized that our superior officer was behind such an errand as I was on. He had the good sense to say to himself: "Well, if that is the Boss's work, I'd better leave it alone." But he kept his men looking out for me, which is only human nature.

One of the experiences that I had during this second month in the interests of railroading, so far as its traffic applies to tramps, occurred in Ohio. During my extraordinary privileges as a railroading tramp, and with all my credentials from the general manager's office, I picked up a freight train going west of Mansfield, Ohio, upon which I nevertheless found myself in difficulties. I saw three tramping negroes on this train. I saw them get on the train – largely a coal train so that one could see from the caboose window exactly what was going on – and went after them, car after car full of coal, until I reached the biggest of the three. The train was going at the rate of about twenty miles an hour. I snatched the hat of the biggest one that I could see and said, with some reminiscences in mind, I must confess: "You have your nerve with you, riding on this road. Hit the gravel."

The negro looked up at me, as if all the majesty of the law had been suddenly invested in my humble person, and said, with a truly pathetic tramp touch: "Cap, the train is going a little too hard." He received back his hat, and he and his two companions were asked by me, in no uncertain terms, to leave the train at a certain siding.

I made up my mind that those three negroes should get no train leaving the siding – a resting place for tramps, and for trains that needed coal and steam to go farther on. I went to the signal tower and telegraphed east and west for an officer to get to the signal tower in question and arrest the trespassers as soon as possible. This may seem a hard thing for a man to do, who had been through what I had. But I was responsible to the general manager of that property. I was also responsible to my own idea of integrity, and I believed in my inmost soul that it was the thing to do.

The negroes wanted to fight me. I was carrying a toothbrush at the time. While at the coaling station the negroes lingered around and made every effort to catch every freight train that was going out their way. I rode every one of these going in their direction to within about one hundred yards of their waiting place. Finally, the last "run," as they well knew, had gone. As I dropped off the last freight train that they were not swift enough to catch, I walked toward them, and was greeted with these words: "Do you think you run this road? If you do, you'll get a bullet hole through you so soon that you won't know what struck you."

I thought of my toothbrush as the only weapon I had. I thought also of the willingness on the part of those negroes to revenge themselves, and I thought still more closely about the distance between where I stood and the coaling station. It so happened that my bluff went. I said to the negroes: "If there is any shooting to be done here I'll begin it." The negroes left me alone, and I left them alone. I could not, however, get over the idea that they had infringed on my territory as investigator, police officer, or anything else that you want to call it. The result of the experience was that the police officer that I had telegraphed for toward the east appeared at the coaling station as soon as he could, and that we rode on together to the next village. There I said to him: "I think we will catch those negroes not very far away from here." He picked up the town marshal and away we went down the track to find those negroes. We found them.

Dusk was just coming on, and they were sitting alongside the track. The policeman from the east drew his revolver, went up to them, and said, much to their surprise: "I place you under arrest." The negroes wilted, and all of us went to the station house of the nearest village. They were given an immediate hearing. They said that they had not been seen on any train, other than a passenger train on which they had paid their fares, during all the years of their existence. The justice said: "Do you suppose that that man is going to come here and tell me that he saw you on a certain freight train when he didn't see you on that freight train?"

One of the negroes replied: "I never saw that man before in my life." This was the man whose hat I had taken when I told him to get off the train. The justice gave all three a thirty-day sentence to the Canton Workhouse. The next morning, the negroes were prisoners of the local authorities. By these local authorities they were handcuffed, put on a train, and started for their destination. Foolishly, I not only followed them in Canton, but I went up with them, in the street car, to the workhouse. During that ride I heard all the hard things that can possibly be said about any one.

This experience and my participation in it may not seem so very creditable to one who had himself been a tramp. But what did I learn about those negroes? They had been employees of a circus, had got drunk and into a row, and had left their positions as circus men. So far as I have been able to make out, they had no right to have a free ride anywhere.

This is merely one of the incidents that fell to my lot during the second month. Of course there were many others, which interested me at the time, to think over, but which would not interest the reader.

The main thing I learned to believe in and expect in my general manager was a great efficiency. All through my tramp experiences at his request, I found, even in tramp life, that the great thing is getting there and doing something. My report to him about the general ability of the police force, which he and his subordinates had got together for the purpose of completely ridding the property of the tramp nuisance, was that I thought he had at least got the Fort Wayne road so cleaned up, in that respect, that no "respectable" tramp would ride on it. In making this report I said to the general manager: "They are stealing coal on the Lake Shore Railroad. There is a man who told me that on the Lake Shore Railroad every twentieth train, before it gets forty miles out of Buffalo, gets dug into." On that same expedition for the general manager I ran up against two tramp camps at the end of one of the "Short Lines" at Ashtabula. My interest at that time was not to disturb either camp at all. I went down to the Lake Shore Railroad, toward their coal chutes, and there I found two camps. The fires of these were being bountifully supplied by coal taken from the adjoining railroad company. My position was peculiar. Tramps, and criminals for that matter, do not like to have any one approach what they believe to be their property. I went to one of the camps, and sat down on a railroad tie. Pretty soon a person of unquestionable importance in his own tramp line, said to me: "Have you a match?"

"I think I have. I'll see."

"If you find one, go over and build your own fire."

I did so, and was left more or less in peace