side above it was a holding a long row of white cups and a shelf with tin knives and forks near the up to date range the only real piece of furniture in the room hung the in which all mill carried their noon or midnight meals a crowd of men were lounging cheerfully about talking smoking and enjoying life one of them playing a they were making the most of a brief spell before their meal and departure for work a book about myself in the room above as the landlord cheerfully showed us were double iron set close together and on them neatly laid in these two rooms lived besides the boarding and his e both and their two babies twenty men they were those who handled steel and bars and loaded trains worked in filled steel with stock and what not they all worked twelve hours a day and their reward was this and what they could save over and above it out of nine sixty per week said a good thing about them at the time i don t know how it is i know these people are and the mill owners pay them the lowest wages the these as well as their and the community which they make by their work don t give a damn for them and yet they are happy and be hanged if they don t make me happy it must be that just work is happiness and i agreed with him plenty of work something to do the ability to avoid the of idleness and useless pensive futile thought there was another side that i thought was a part of all this and that was the vice situation there were so many girls who walked the streets here and back of the and buildings as well as in the streets ranged along the below water first and second were many houses of as large and flourishing an area as i had seen in any city as i learned from the political and police man the police here as elsewhere protected vice or in other words upon it chapter in the meantime i was going about my general work and an ea task it proved my city editor cool soul soon instructed me as to the value of news and its here we don t touch on labor except through our labor man he told me and he knows what to say there s nothing to be said about the rich or religious in a sense they re all right in so far as we know we don t touch on in high life the big steel men here just about own the place so we can t some papers out west and down in new york go in for but we don t i d rather have some simple little feature any time a story about some old fellow with habits than any of these or of course we do cover them when we have to but we have to be mighty careful what we say so much for a free press in a d and i found that the city itself by reason of the recent defeat administered to organized labor and the soft of the newspapers presented a most and aspect there was little local news a wedding or death in high society a in a saloon the of a steel plant the visit of a or the remarks of some local provided the on which the local readers were fed sometimes an outside event such as the organization by general of of his army at that time moving washington to petition against the doings of the or the and impossible doings of � opposition president to the dominant party of the state or the manner in which the party of this region was attempting to steal an or share in the spoils � these and the grand comments of gentlemen in financial positions here and elsewhere as to the outlook for a book about myself in the nation or the steel mills or the coal fields occupied the best places in the newspapers for a great as daring and restless as this it seemed that it could be so or say so little the colossal the men at the top but when it came to labor or the their restlessness or demands or the views of a third rate preacher complaining of in dress or morals or an actor his views on art or a on some unimportant phase of our life it was a very different matter these papers were then free enough to say their say i recall that thomas b reed then speaker of the house once passed through the city and stopped off to visit some friendly steel i was sent to interview him and obtain his views as to general s army a band of poor mistaken who imagined that by marching to washington and protesting to they could compel a american and house to take of their woes this able � and he was no fool being at the time in the and favor of the money power and looked upon as the probable republican � pretended to me to believe that a vast national menace lay in such a movement and protest why it s the same as revolution i he washing his face in his at the his swaying loosely about his fat it s an unheard of proceeding for a hundred years the american people have had a fixed and constitutional and method of they have their county and state and national and their power of to the same they can write any plank they wish into any party platform and compel its by their now comes along a man who finds something that doesn t just suit his views and instead of waiting and appealing to the regular party he an army and proceeds to march on 