Omaha daily bee., 1884-12-17

with red peppers, and Is q great stimuli
ant to the weak stomach. The common
est kind Of meat is used In making it
stuff that sells In the butchers stall fo
about & cents a pound. A bowl of thi
stuff costs 10 cents. In the evening yor
can take another bowl for supper. Day
when | make q little more money / TAX
some Irish stew instead of the chill col
carne.
1t costs 10 cents.
"How about beds2'
swell, I've got a blanket, and Their,
are always empty box cars lying on the
railroad track, into which | creep ant
sleep until morning. The last few nights
though, 1t has been 30 cold that
couldn't do it, and that's the resson
struck you tonight"
"rhe American laborer has not much
ST ow herel' queried the writer, after q
pause.
"No. He was too close to old Mexico
and Mexican cheap labor affects him Just
SIS Chinese cheap labor affected him in
California. No white man can work fol-
Mexican wages, and as the supply of
Mexican labor right at their doors is al.
most inexhaustible, contractors naturally
give 1t the preference; hence the vast
number of idle men you see hanging
around the street corners. To give you
an idea how cheap Mexican labor Is, the
Mexican Central railroad found itactuslly
more profitable to employ Mexicans by
the thousands than to use labor saving
machinery in making the road bed south
of chihuahua. Twenty cents a day was
big pay for them, and they actually car
ried the dirt in baskets on their heads to
construct the dumps. First class Next
can miners only get 70 cents a day and
ordinary miners 90 cents. That is what
the Corralitos mining company which il
considered a liberal outfit, is paying.
| No, sir; the southwest frontier is no
place for a poor man, and the republic of
| Mexico is still worse. Mexico Is one of
the best countries in the world to live out
of and don't you forget it"
TWELVE MILES AWAY.
"Another curse of that place is" con.
tinued the frontier tramp. "You're L.
200 miles away from anywhere mean
from any large city. 1t is about that
distance from St. Louis, Chicago, San
Francisco or the City of Mexico. You
are at the extremely small hub of a
mighty big wheel. and you're forever
crying, with Sterne's startling, 81 can't
get out! l can't get out" Not that Ell
Paso Is a bad place, if a man is q genuine
bum, devoid of shame or the remnant of
self.respect. Such men can pick up their
grub all the time and get some old corral
to sleep in; and the climate is splendid
but men like myself, sir, who have seen
better days and can hardly see worse, it
is we who suffer. Drop into the all
night saloons on Ell Paso street and see
the poor fellows who sleep on chairs,
hugging the stove to keep their feeble
blood in circulation, and If you won't
think it must have been in a vein of
irony that old Greeley exclaimed Go
west, young man, 60 west | shall be
greatly mistaken"
"What do you think is the reason that
the west and southwest is. getting as bad
as the old WORKOUT east?"
Railroads, sir, railroads. They bring
in 100 poor men for the one man with
capital. In the old days when it took a
small fortune to cross the plains, though
all were not rich, every man was COM
Portable. What the southwest wants, air,
is less labor and more capital"
Here an incursion on the part of a
freight screw" on the Y. and P. brought
the interview to an abrupt close.
G. A. M.