The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1894-02-08
IN A BARROOM.
Heart-RendinG Evidences of the Fell
Work of Drink.


Work of Drink.
The usual amount of distress among
the poor and unemployed in this city
has opened a new and truly worthy
field OF enterprise for some OF our daily
journals, one of which has established
free employment bureau, while an
other has collected fund for gratu-
itOus distribution of food among the
people of the tenement districts. The
same newspaper which has undertaken
the latter task has also sought to
awaken interest in behalf of its work
by publishing long and circumstantial
accounts of the daily life and surround
ings Of the wretched inha bitants of the
slums. These sketches are interesting
and significant as showing, among 9TH
er things, the large part which the
drink evil plays as a producing factor
in the awful misery and degradation
prevalent III these places A few pic
lures from one of these descriptive arti
cles VIII suffice to show the drift of the
whole. 1t is everywhere the same
rum and misery, misery and rum. Here
is what the writer saw one cold night
recently in q New York saloon.
Eight or nine big stalwart long
shoremen came in, lined up at the bar
and one and all ordered whisky. They
had put in good days work. They
We're spending their money. Each
man left money enough there that
night to pay for all the stew that was
cooked in that place that day. In the
midst Of the cursing, swearing, and
rough joking a little girl pushed her
way through the side door, her pail in
hand, wanting free lunch. She could
not have been more than five years old.
She wore little cotton frocll and
shoes through which her toes peeped.
She got as much of the lunch as was
left
Please, Pat. she replied, cant you
give me some more?"
''No more tonight, Susie; that is the
last. But hold your Dress
The child held up her skirt as if it
were an apron. Two little naked,
weatherbeaten legs were exposed. In
to the dress Pat poured cheese, crack
ers, pickles, onions Everything that
was left on the lunch counter.
we lose nothing by this" explained
Pa. "When the men are working
they spend more money than enough to
pay for the little give them"
do you trust much here?"
THE men we do That is, when
to trust them when they are not work
ing"
Why not?"
"Well, they would run up a bill here,
another bill at the next corner, and so
on. They would get so deeply in debt
they would never pay us. 1t is not the
amount we would lose by the bill. but
we would lose the mans trade. When
he had money to spend he would go
somewhere else to spend it rather than
come to the place where he might ex-
pect to pay for what he had had be-
fore he got any more. But take the
general run of men, when they are
working they will come in and
pay up every Saturday night. They
don't run up much. In the morn
ing they come in and get big ball.
They go to work then, and in the
evening they get another big ball.
Then few pints during the night.
Saturday night perhaps they will owe
two or three dollars. They pay that
first, and then we get a good part of
what is left"
| counted six children who came in
to that barroom who wore no shoes.
And the snow that night covered the
ground. Not one of these children
was dressed to resist the biting wind
that swept up from the East river,
searching and finding the rents and
tears in the wretched messengers gar
ments and chilling their very marrow.
There's no exaggeration here; mind
you. When these children came into
the barroom they stamped their half
frozen toes in a pitiful dance on the
sawdust-covered floor and sought to
warm their benumbed bodies at the
red-hot stove that was shut out from
them by the loafers who surrounded it
who toasted themselves at it.
These children, boys and girls, were
brazen. A curse was their retort,
worse than curses their jests One boy,
who could not have been more than six
years old, locked critically at the pint
of beer the bartender handed him in
the pail. The froth of the beer dubbed
scarcely to the rim OF the pail The