The Topeka state journal., 1897-07-16

few vegeta bles, form the staple. A
pound and a half goes into the Joint ket-
tie each day for each man and the odor
and general appearance of the average
caldron are positively beyond description.
This rude plenty is cheap. The meat
costs Is cents. Seven more for bread and
vegetables, and for cooking make
average daily cost per foreign miner in
this district of 40 cents. The daily cost is
less than 30 cents when the men are not
working. That cost is only when he is
making $1.15. Idle, his daily pound and
half of meat is cut down. He pays pro-
portionately less, for a boarding shanty
is the same as a college students board
ing club, with the difference that most
foreign couples make money. The man
becomes a boarding boss and works
also at mining. The wife cooks, and the
partnership gets $3.50 from each boarder
monthly.
The money order department at this
postoffice would show that one of these
men has sent over 81, 500 to Europe in the
last six years.
Allowing for a deduction of idle days,
the daily cost for living of a single for
eign miner is not more than 25 cents.
Company houses rent for "a to s6 monthly.
found some inclosing fifteen adults and
five children. Many are more crowded.
eral thing the interiors of the foreign
miners boarding houses are a fetfd COM
binatfon, painfully visible uncleanliness
and sickening human smells.
In one upper room I saw five filthy beds,
two men asleep in each. The room was
about fourteen feet square by seven high.
Two small windows struggled to ventilate
it. A blackened chimney showed a lamp
that must have smoked far into the
night.
Unoccupied and in the day time the
odor was a positive stencil, and yet ten
men slept there every night, poisoning
each his little hundred odd cubic feet of
air, not to mention the lamp.
The worst tenement in st. Louis Ievee
district cannot match the reeking effluvia
of such room, combined dining-room,
nursery and wet weather sitting room be-
low.
Flies swarmed over every square inch.
Other small animals by thousands Every
thing was coated with greasy dirt, inc1ud-
ing two fat, stuffy babies sleeping with
nothing under them but the naked filth
of the floor. The most prominent objects
were beer mugs-more of them than
plates. Other downstairs rooms occupied
by the boarding boss and his wife were
comparatively clean. There was an abso-
lutely dirty kitchen shed about six feet
wide. One woman was washing clothes,
while another woman cooked the usual
mess for fourteen persons.
In front of the house were a dozen men
1ounging and playing cards. Only one
could speak any English and that but
two dozen words, principally profane-
1 finally OWNED that they were all con-
tented. The strike was holiday at the
proper time of the year, and they expect
ed to have enough to eat until its end.
They have always had enough to drink
and to spare. At least 800 eighth" kegs
of beer come here every two weeks-pay
day. Ninety per cent is drunk by the for
eign miners, averaging a pint and third
daily for each man.
The cheapness of these peoples living
can best be seen when the fact develops
that one of them after paying for his
food and shelter gets his plentiful beer
and still has IA per cent of his daily wage
for other expenses, for clothing, which
, he buys seldom, and for foreign money
orders, which he purchases quite often.
The foreign miners boarding shanty I
have described is not the worst in Dillon
VALE nor are the Eng1ish-speaking miners
here as badly off in other places.
Thus does the average foreign miner
live and If the American miner does not
wish to be crowded out he must live in
the same unsanitary and immoral way
or some laws will have to be changed.