Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1900-07-12
CUPID BUSY IN COKE REGION
Single Men of Arnold City Import 80
Young Women

Arnold City is the only municipality
whose citizens have ever banded to-
gether and imported themselves wives
TO the number of 80 Arnold City is
coal mining hamlet on the Monon-
gahela river, up near Fayette City. Its
poulation is made up largely of
foreigners. AS a city ii does not
amount to much, as it's residences are
so scattered about that it is pretty
much all suburbs, with a general store,
coal company establishment, where
everybody has to go one or more times
week. In fact, business is SO good at
the company store that the manage
ment has adopted a rule that on GER
tain days of the week nothing but SIS
and $40 orders will be received. The
small fry need not apply on these days.
Times have been unusually good
this year at Arnold City and the
foreigners of that section have been
making lots of money As much as SO
a day has been the average pay of
some of them for months past and they
have been feeling gay. Many of the
workmen left sweethearts in the old
country Those who left none there
could not see that il made any par
ticular difference, just SO they got
one They all realized that 1t was not
well for man to be alone and they
were almost unanimous in their desire
| for company. Consequently new and
peculiar phase Of the immigrant bust
ness has grown up around Arnold City,
and, in fact, through all the coke coun-
| try.
The immigrant agent is up 10 his
| business. Knowing that this is spring
and the time when the young mans
! fancy lightly turns etc, he is talking
| about home, sweet home, love in a
cottage, and all the other romantic
things he can think Of in Slavish and
Hungarian and is starting an epidemic
! of lovesickness in the coke country,
which Is spreading like proverbial
wild6re This is what has struck
/ Arnold City.
| II was by this means that 80 fair
young maidens were recently imported
| to Arnold City Some Of the residents
| Of the place, the Engllsh-speaklng res
/ idents, say there were not 30 Of them.
/ They claim there were not over ten.
| Others .un the number up as high as
| so But the story as it is most fire.
quently told says 80.
Detective Robert Sheppard, Of the
Baltimore and Ohio railroad who prob
ably knows more men - the coke
country of every nationality than any
other three men in it, says "rhe I'm
migrant agent is doing a rushing busl-
ness in the wedding line just now. If
| you want a wife all you need do Is
! let him know. He can give you your
| pick of anywhere from a half dozen
to so almost every day. 1t is almost
! impossible for woman to come into
I the coke country just now without at
least one and maybe dozen Offers Of
marriage. ] know Of one case just
| recently when a newly arrived Slayish
| girl was standing in the steamship
Office in Connellsvlle and In less than
an hour she had three offers Of mar
riage from men she had never seen
! before.
AS she had come over here to
marry her sweetheart, all she could
/ do was to promise to be a sister TO all
of them, and they had to hunt else
where. III tell you, though, the sup
| ply is not nearly equal to the demand.
With wages IN the neighborhood Of
| SO day, every young foreigner in the
coke country is anxious to get mar
ried, and the girls are being brought
over by the brokers in squads. |
know nothing about the Arnold CITY
/ importation, but that is the same % is
| going on all over the coke country to-
day. If the present good tines con
tinue there will not be single
foreigner left in the coke region If the
supply Of girls holds out, Pittsburg
/ Dispatch.
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