River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1878-10-03
A Visit to Stag Town.

Did you ever visit Stag Towng or hea
of it2 Until making my last tou il
England, / never heard of the acl
Country.
just after leaving Wolverhampton 70
Birmingham we began to rush through
settlements of small, low, brick houses
huts rather, yet arranged with order
huge climneys standing in the midst o
them, and clouds of deuse blacl
coal smoke oelching from them
filling the atmosphere with 500
1t was not long before we per
ceived that this was coal and iron re
lyon, and here were the peoples and thu
work by which these great staples arr
produced. 1t was the first sight we haC
of the life that is led by some of our fel
low-mcn and women, and their children
the subject was one for study anc
wonder, and we became deeply inter
ested in it before we gave it up.
''You should see it in the night" said /
friend who had lived in the REGION, and
had long been familiar with the moods o.
the Back Country. "The nigh. is the
time when the lurid CLEANS of the fires
light up the blackness of darkness, and
make the sublime picture of horrors
you ought to see it in the night"
But it was out of my power to "see il
in the night" and my friend was SO good
at description, took his word for it
And he told me of the effect produced on
the agricultural laborers who are tempt
ed, by the promise of high wages, to
leave the farm work and come to the
mines. When they had strike in the
Black Country few years ago, and the
miners and puddlers Il do not believe
you know what puddler is, or does) re
fused to work for six dollars week,
agents were sent out among the fal mers
and the field hands, who get but half that.
were easily persuaded to quit the green
meadows and hillsides, and turn in as
workers in the mines and furnaces of the
Black Country. They made a rush to
Stag Town, happy in the prospect of
doubling their wages, and getting rich in
a hurry. IT'S ever thus in life. Tasting
to be rich plunges people into pit, and
these fellows soon found themselves in a
pit from which they werC glad enough TO
escape. Why? For the very good rea-
son they could not breathe IN the day
time nor sleep in the night, and unless a
hard-worked farmer can have air and
sleep he is not in state of great enjoy
ment. He is fond of high wages, the
English laborer is-and in this respect
he is not distinguished from other men
who work for wages-but there is moth
ing dearer to farm hand among tie En-
glish than air and sleep, unless it IS beer.
And so it was short apprenticeship these
farmer boys served in Stag Town. They
quit "Reminiscences was in vain. Few
and short were the words they said, but
thew were ABOUT like these, not excepting
the allusion to Bunyan's Pilgrim, which
showed that the spokesman was above
the average in book-learning;
"Let them as think they'd loike 1t go
and hev try, / hev tried, and when /
tell We that there beant part o. Pill
grlm's Progress itself that can COON oop
to it for VERY valleys and belchings O.
smoke and vlame, you won't wonder to
zee me back again, and to hear me say
hat am glad o the chance"
If had been a believer in the heather
of ante Christian times, could
nave readily imagined that Tartarus was
directly under this region, and the CHM
leys from which the thick black smoke
md flame of the bitunlinous coal fires
we're rising all the while, were the out
cts of the fire that is never q1enched.
Here there are vast iron works and coal
pits to match, so that quantities of coal
ire here mined to be consumed on the
,pot, as we'll as to be sent away. These
ong streets of low brick dwellings are
yer the caverns made wider and more
dangerous, as they reach nearer the sur
ACE, or becoming more extensive and not
safely supported, the roof is more likely
o fall in
1t does sometimes. The wife of pas
.or who had lived in this region assured
ne that she had seen houses standing in
apparent security on her way to church,
out on her return they had sunk INTO the
awful abyss. In the midst of these per
petuaI fires and smoke and dirt, the
0lackness of the coal-pits pervading the
whole mass of humanity, the Inhabitants
become careless, as the jewellers on the
sides of Vesuvius, who dress their vines
of the destruction that may be
ready to come upon them. The pits that
have been made by these sudden sinkings
Of the earth become pools of stagnant
water, and the boys and beast battle in
them, and sometimes they are dry and
wide enough for public play grounds.
Graveyards have caved in, and the dead
have been mingled in heap from which
there will be no rescue before a general
Yet there are thousands,
and perhaps tens of thousands, of these
dwellers on this frail crust, who sleep, if
they do sleep at all, with the knowledge
that underneath them men are at wcra
with picks and with powder, earning
their bread by undermining the house
above in which are wife and children.