The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1888-01-11
A WORK TINT it
HOW LIVES ARE 5QUANoERz0
THE LAKE TRAFFIC.

neutrality-suspicious. Loading n Ncs-
seI-The Fearful Physical Results.
Men are tho cheapest animals on earth, and
their lives are squandered in conducting the
lake commerce as in battle; indeed, competi-
ton is warfare, and men die in labor's ranks
as they do on battlefelds where bullets
thickly swarm. The longshoremen who toll
in the lake traffic work hard and drink heav-
lily. saw the men who work on the coal
and iron docks at Buffalo and on the coal
docks at Toledo. Almost without exception
they were broad shouldered thick necked
Irishmen. At Buffalo my steamer drew up
to the iron dock just as another steamer
moved away.
"How many tons of rails do you want
captainsn the foreman of the longshoremen
asked.
Five hundred, and hundred tons of
spikes and fishplates,n the captain replied.
1--WE have just finished loading 900 tens
in that steamer" nodding his head to indi-
cate the departing vessel, land the men are
tired. 1t is supper time, captain, he added,
''and you will have to wait until the men
eat and rest little while; then we will load
YOU
The sturdy Irishmen had been working
continuously for twenty hours. Their flannel
shirts were wringing wet with the sweat of
toll. They were almost exhausted. They
walked slowly toward their boarding house,
stopping ON the way at a saloon to get a
drink of whisky. At o'clock they returned
and began to run steel rails that weighed $40
pounds each into the hold of the ship. There
were thousands of tons of rails piled on the
docks. Two men laid a rail on heavy hand
truck, and one man wheeled it up an incline
into the ship. All the men were bareheaded.
All were clad in flannel. The work was ex-
ceedingly heavy, and the truckmen strained
painfully every time they wheeled their
heavily laden trucks up the incline. sat on
the rail of the ship watching the work and
admiring the muscular development of the
men who lahored below me. Take them all
in all, they were the most powerful men j
have ever seen. Presently it became dark.
A cold wave blew Off the lake and over the
wharf. Fires to give light to work by were
built on the dock
After two hours passed in this excessively
hard work, saw the overstrained muscles of
the Irish truckmen twitch and jerk under
their white skins as though turbulent creeks
flowed there. They were almost exhausted.
But not man fiinched from his work The
foreman sent for bucket of beer. When it
was brought the tired men drank deeply.
Sweat, laden with iron Dust rolled down
their bodies in tiny rills. The beer did not
seem to meet the imperious demands their
systems made for stimulants Presently a
broad shouldered, bullet headed, black eyed
trucl1man slammed his truck down on the
dock and said, loudly: Course the beer There
is no strength in it at ALL Then, turning to
the foreman, he said: sect pailful of
whisky, or we will never get this iron
loaded. A pailful of raw whisky was
brought onto tho dock, Man after man
raised the bucket TO his lips, and drank freely
of the fiery spirits. Then they worked with
renewed energy. noticed that their muscles
ceased to witch They worked rapidly, and
though they drank high proof spirits at short
intervals, the only apparent effect it had on
them was TO cause their naturally fiery tenn
pors to blaze n little higher. Occasionally
men dropped the handles of their trucks pre-
paratory to fighting but their foreman had
them we'll in hand and controlled them with
a few sharp spoken words of command, on
hearing which they grasped the handles of
their trucks and resumed work, with many
surly shakes of their head.
The mate of the vessel saw that | was in
terested in the work. and that admired the
physical perfection of the 'longshoremen.
He sat silently by my side for a short time
looking ut the busy scene. Finally he said:
81 have seen hundreds, yes thousands of these
men buried, That gang" pointing to the
busy workers over whom Pickering bars of
light played, sis a prime gang. They are
powerful young men. Not one of them will
be ON this dock in five years from tonight.
The work is too hard for men to do and live
These men work by the ton They earn from
"a to 81 per day. Night work is double pay
If hon how
are tired, they stimulate with whisky have
known them to work for thirty-six hours con-
tinuously, and eight hours of that heavy labor
is sufficient TO kill the devil These men,
he continued, twill finish loading the steel at
about / o'clock tonight. After they quit
work every one Of them will drink half a
pint of raw whisky before going TO his board
ing house. They will fling themselves on
their beds, clad in their wet clothing, and let
the heat of their bodies dry them while they
lie in drunken slumber. At 30 years, if one
by chance lives to be so old, the 'longshoreman
Is broken down old man. They consume
themselves with hard work and hard liquor
Americans never do this work, and it is not
a job that beer and cabbage stuffed Dutch
men banker after Yes he said carelessly
as he looked the gang over again, "they are
powerful men, but they will all be dead in
five years. He clambered down from the
rail and walked TO his quarters whistling
gayly.
At Toledo, Ohio, where we stopped to take
on 1000 tons of coal, there was another gang
of sturdy Irishmen who shoveled coal from
railroad cars into large iron buckets which
held ton each. A wire rope which termi-
mated in a strong hook passed through pull
ley suspended from the arm of derrick, and
the lower end passed around the drum Of
steam winch When the buckets were filled
they were attached to the hook and elevated
sufficiently high to clear the rail of the ship,
then the arm Of the derrick was drawn over
the deck of the vessel until the bucket
was directly over the open hatchway, into
which its contents were dumped The coal
handlers who worked on this dock were
physically almost the equals of the longshore-
men who worked on the Buffalo iron dock.
Hour after hour these strong men bent over
their scoop shovel, each man shoveling into
his own bucket. So regular were their move
ments that | timed them. They lifted and
cast distance of four feet sixteen scoops
full of coal Il minute. For twelve hours
they worked at this monotonous and hard
labor There was not en- American on the
dock, and, as at Buffalo, whisky was called
upon to aid the human machine, and to sup
ply quickly available fuel. | was told that
these men are short lived, as their Buffalo
brothers are The trimmers, those men who
work in dark holes with wet sponges tied
over their mouths to keep the dust that is
germane to coal and wheat out Of their
lungs, what Of thems Their lives are lives
Of horribly hard work, and are wholly unat.
tractive. No man who has been educated in
the free schools of America could be hired to
trim coal or wheat ships. Personally should
prefer to work as a convict at Sing Sing than
to work a free man at trimming coal or
wheat carrying vessels.--Frank Wilheson In
New York Times.
Uncle Sans Curiosity Shop.