The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1905-05-05

America, instead OF subject of Great
Britain, because you have got to be
rich or be hungry here, and if you are
too rich you have got no appetite
You have heard of the roast beef Of
old England, but nobody eats it but
the dukes and bankers. The working
men never even saw a picture of
roast beef, and yet we look upon all
EngliShmen as beef-eaters, but three
fourths of the people in this town look
hungry and discouraged, and they
never seem to know whether they are
going to have any supper. ~--...-- r~--.
went Gown to market this morn
ing where the middle class and the
very poor people buy their supplies,
and it would make you sick to see
them. They buy small leaves of bread
and penny's worth of tea, and that is
breakfast, and if a man is working he
takes some of the bread to work for
lunch, and the wife or mother buys a
carrot or a quarter of a cabbage, and
maybe a bone with piece of meat
about as big as a fish bait, and that
makes supper, with a growler of beer.
Say, the chunk of meat with bone
that an American butcher would throw
at dog that he had never been intro
duced to would be a banquet for
large family over here.
have been down into the White
Chapel district, which is the Five
Points of London, and of the thou
sands of tough people l saw there was
not a man but looked as though he
would cut your liver out for IL shilling,
and every woman was drunk on gin.
What there is about gin that makes it
the national beverage for bad people
beats me, for it looks like water,
tastes like medicine and smells like
cold storage eggs. At home when
person takes a drink of beer or whisky
he at least looks happy for a minute,
and maybe he laughs, but here nobody
laughs unless somebody gets hurt, and
that seems to tickle everybody in the
White Chapel district.
The people look mad and savage
when they are not drinking, as though
they were only looking for an oppor-
tunity to commit murder. and then
when they take drink of gin, instead
of smiling and smacking their lips as
though it was good and braced them
up, they look as though they had been
stabbed with dirk and they put on a
look of revenge, as though they would
like to wiring child's neck or cut holes
in the people they meet.
Two drinks Of gin makes a man or
woman look as though they had swal-
lowed buzz saw. I always thought
drinking liquor made people think
they were enjoying themselves, or that
they took it to drive away care and
make them forget their sorrows, but
when these people drink gin they seem
to do it the way an American drinks
carbolic acid, to end the whole bust
ness quick.
At home the drinker drinks to make
him feel like he was at picnic. Here
every drinker acts like a suicide, who
only hopes that he may commit MUIR
der before the gin ends his career.
And there are hundreds of thousands
of people in this town who have no
ambition except to get bit of bread
to sustain them till they can get a
drink of gin, and gradually they let up
on bread entirely and feed on gin, and
look like mad dogs and snarl at every
body they see, as much as to say:
What are you going to do about it?"
A good square American meal would
give them fit, and they would go to
a hospital and die If the meal could
not be got out of them.
Gosh. but was glad to get out of