The Bossier banner., 1885-04-23

About two years ago had a good situa.
ton IN store in Tucson, but owing to
duh times got let out. | hadn't much
money, but I started for Silver City,
but found nothing. | tried Deming
with the same result, and then Lake
Valley My money had given out and
L was glad of any job. tried to geton
as surface laborer at the Sierra Grande
mines, but there were hundreds of
strong, able laborers who, of course,
cut me out. Men who employ laborers
always select the strongest men they
can get, fact that the fellows who,
parrot-like, repeat Horace Greeley's cry
60 West, young man, go West, seem
to entirely ignore. From Lake Valley
to here | beat my way over the Santa
Fe line, and ! have now been in Ell Pasd
about three weeks" ...., ...
How have, you managed to live?'
20, it's wonderful how little a man
can live on whenh he's forced to it! Look
at these fellows up in the Arctic, how
they got along on their sealskin pants
for months before they took to caunibal
ism. don't suppose that ever suf
fered as badly as these men did, but |
have known what it is to be without
food for two days. But I'll tell yop
how have managed to live. [ peddl6
pencils round the saloons, and young
fellows often give me ten cents and
refuse to take a pencil, in which they
are sensible, as they are the poorest and
cheapest / could get in the town. Then
they very often ask me to have drink.
| suppose Tn often asked to take a
drink dozen times in day. 1t never
struck you, perhaps, but it has often
struck me as strange that dozen men
will ask you to have drink and not one
will ask you to have square meal,
though starvation looks out of your very
eyes. With the pencil racket fellow
may make two bits or perhaps thirty
cents day, and this is how he lives on
it, He buys a loaf of bread for five
cents in the morning and eats half of it.
He then goes into one of those cheap
chop stands of which there are three in
Ell Paso, and gets bowl of chill con
carne. 1t is Mexican dish, kind of
meat stewed with red peppers, and is a
great stimulant to the weak stomach.
The commonest kind of meat is used in
making it-stuff that sells in the butch
ers stall for about six cents pound.
A bowl of this stuff costs ten cents. In
the evening you can take another bowl
for supper. Days when | make little
more money I take some Irish stew in
stead of the chill con carne. 1t costs
fifteen cents"
'How about bedsP'
"We1l, I've got blanket, and there
are always empty box cars lying on the
railroad track, into which l creep and
sleep until morning. The last few
nights, though, it has been so cold that
l couldn't go it, and that's the reason ]
struck you tonight. "
'"The American laborer has not much
show here" queried the writer after a
pause.
mo. He is too close to old Mexico,
and Mexican cheap labor affects him
just as Chinese cheap labor affected him
in California. No white man can work
for Mexican wages, and as the supply
of Mexican labor right at their doors
is almost inexaustible, contractors nat
urally give it the preference; hence the
vast number of idle men you see hang
ing round the street-corners. To give
you an idea how cheap Mexican labor
is, the Mexican Central Railroad found
it actually more profitable to employ
Mexicans by the thousand than to use
labor-saving machinery in making the
road-bed south of Chihuahua. Twenty
cents day was big pay for them, and
they actually carried the dirt in baskets
on their heads to construct the dumps.
First-class Mexican miners only get
seventy-five cents day and ordinary
miners fifty cents. That is what the
Corralitos Mining Company, which is
considered liberal outfit, is paying.
No, sir; the Southwest frontier is no
place for 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. y
Another curse to this place is, !" con-
tinued the frontier tramp. you're
1900 miles from anywhere mean
from any large city. 1t is about that
distance from st. Louis, to Chicago, to
San Francisco, or to 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: I can't
get-out. | can't get out Not that El
Paso is bad place if a man is 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 in chairs, hugging the stove to
keep their feeble blood in circulation,
and if you won n't think it must have
been in vein of irony that old Greeley
exclaimed: Go West, young man, &C
West, shall be greatly mistaken.
What do you think is thereason that
the West and Southwest are getting as
bad as the old, worn out East?"
Railroads, sir, railroads. They bring
in hundred poor men for the one man
with capital. In the old days when il
took small fortune to cross the plains
though all were not rich, every man
was comfortable. What the Southwest
wants, sir, is less labor and more
capital"