Wichita eagle., 1888-02-01
A WORK THAT KILLS.
HOW LIVES ARE SQuANDERED IN
THE LAKE TRAFFIC.
How Strong Men Work Hard. Drink
Heavily and Die Long Before They
neutrality-suspicious. Loading YES
sel-The Fearful Physieal Results.

Men are the 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 battlefields where bullets
thickly swarm. The longshoremen who toll
in the lake traffic work hard and drink heav-
lily. l saw the men who work on the coal
and iron docks at Buffalo and on .he 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,
captainl' 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 1000 tons
in that steamer" nodding his head to indi.
cate the departing vessel, 'and the men are
tired. 1t is supper time, captain" he added,
land you will have to wait until the meh
eat and rest little while; then we will loao
YOU"
The sturdy Irishmen had been working
continuously for twenty hours. Their flannA
toll. They were almost exhausted. They
walked slowly toward their boarding house,
stopping on the way at 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 rail on heavy hanI-
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 oB
the rail of the ship watching the work and
admiring the muscular development of the
men who labored below me- Take them al
in ALL they were the most powerful men }
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 wer:
built % the dock.
After two hours passed in this excessively
hard work, l saw the overstrained muscles OF
the Irish truclmen twitch and jerk under
their white skins as though turbulent creeks
flowed there. They were almost exhausted.
But not man hinched from his work. The
foreman sent for a 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
truckman slammed his truck down on the
deck and said. loudly: Curse the beer. There
is no strength in it at all" Then, turning to
the foreman, he said: Get a pailful of
whisky, or we will never get this iron
loaded" A pailful Of raw whisky was
brought onto the dock. Man after man
raised the bucket to his lips, and drank freely
of the fiery spirits. Then they worked with
renewed energy. l 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
pers to blaze little higher. Occasionally
men dropped the handles of their trucks pre-
paratory to fighting, but their foreman had
them well 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 short time
looking at 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, lis 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 hive
These men work by the ton. They earn from
81 to 81 per day. Night work is double pay
usually. Instead Of quitting work when they
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 VIII 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 81 years, if one
by chance lives to be so old, the longshoreman
is q 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 wears" 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
81 Id
railroad cars into large iron buckets which
held ton each. \ wire rope which terIni-
mated in strong hook passed through pull
lev suspended from the arm of a derrick, and
the lower end passed around the drum of a
steam winch When the buckets were filed
they were attached to the hook and elevated
sufficiently high TO clear the rail- OF the snip,
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 shoveiiag into
his own bucket. So regular were their move
nents that | timed them. They lifted and
cast n distance Of four feet sixteen scoops
full Of coal a minute. For twelve hours
they wor-ed &. this monntonogs and har1
labor. There was not al American OF the
dock. and. as at Buffalo, whisky was called
upon 10 aid the human machine and TO sup
ply quickly available fuel / was told that
these men are short lived. as their Buffalo
brotnrs ara, The triInrneTs, those men who
work in dark holes with Wet sfonges tied
over their mouths to keep toe dust that IS
eerrnane to cosl and wheat out Of their
lungs, what Of them. lneI A'es sie Hsss
of horribly hard work, and are wholly unat-
sractive. No man who has been educated in