The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1906-04-21

SLOVe, ana over iyeS Stove ne pops
corn and sells it to the throng on
Clark street. He chooses Clark street
because although most of the peo-
pie he NETS are poor, still they are Of
a liberal reckless sort, and would SOON
er give up their money TO one-legged
Tony than to put it in the bank.
Sometimes on Derby Day or Chicago
Day, when there Is a crowd in town,
Tony rents faded blue suit Of clothes
with brass buttons and goes out on
State street and begs. It is strange
how much easier 1t is to get money
when your leg has been taken off by
cannon ball than when it has been
crushed off by car Wheel This is be-
cause people are patriotic.
OF course Tony has a family; all
poor people have children; he keeps
them in basement on Clark street
next to an opium joint. They play in
the streets by day and on hot summer
| nights they go upon the sidewalk and
watch the throng until they fall asleep.
Perhaps the boy will grow up to be
hanged; the girls will most likely al
ways stay on Clark street. Tony goes
out ON the street with his cart every
night except when it SHOWS. One
day he went out in a snow storm and
fell down and broke his wooden leg,
and it had to be fixed with nails and
| iron rings-but this history Is about
his other leg, the one he lost some
years ago.
Tony was born in a most beautiful
spot on the most beautiful lake in the
WOrld-at Belagio on Lake Como.
When he was child he used to sit on
the high promontory and look out at
the clear, deep, blue water below him
| and the soft blue sky above and the
great silent mountains with the snow
capped peaks across the lake. He did
not know how beautiful II was until
years after when he lived in Chicago.
| Virgil lived in the city of Como at the
| other end of the lake, but this was two
thousand years before Tony's day.
In Italy Tony's mother had a little
! garden where she raised vegetables
and took them, with Tony to the little
brick market square in Belagio, where
she sold them to the poor VINO came to
buy. But as Tony grew older he grew
ambitious, and wanted something more
! than the poor straw covered hut, the
little garden, the daily visit to the
|
that this small traffic brought. An
agent Of a transportation company one
day found Tony and told him of AM
erica, where dollars were as plenti-
full Of lires and many times as big
The agent agreed to give him a ticket
and get the pay from the railroad
company after he got job in AM
erica. So he babe his mother good
bye, while she clug to him and moaned
in the hysterical manner Of the very
poor. Then he went to Genoa and
sailed away. He stood on the steer
age deck and looked at the vine-clad
hills and the terraced flower gardens
Of Italy until they were out Of sight.
Tony landed in New York, passed
through the quarantine and Castle
Garden, and then the agent Of the
steamship company took him in hand.
He Joined a gang Of his fellow country
men who were building railroad out
West. His countrymen did not own the
road; they simply stood in the gravel
bank and shoveled dirt from morning
until night. The men who owned the
road lived in New York, and London
and Paris, and spent their time at
the seashore or anywhere else they
wished to go. After passing from
sand-bank to sand bank, he finally
drifted to Chicago, where he joined the
Italian colony, got naturaliZed mar
ried and commenced to raise family
and to vote. In the course of time
Tony got a good steady job in the rail-
road yards along the river and began
to forget Italy, with it's vines and roses
and its eternal soft blue syy. Tony
never was an educated man-indeed
he never had great amount Of brains.
He never learned to speak English, ex-
cept few broken sentences that he
needed every day and even in Italian
he was not learned or bright. He knew
how to shovel sand, to turn a switch
to get out Of the way Of a moving
train, to obey the foreman's orders
and to do what the rich people told
him; most poor people do this last, es-
pecially at election time.
He had very simple, easy job The
yards were about a quarter of mile
wide and mile or two in length
the tracks were laid so closely side
by side that he could hardly STAND
safely between them; half dozer
roads ran their trains and switched
their engines along the tracks ant
from morning to night the yard was
alive with trains and cars and engines
moving up and down. No one came tt
the the yards except the railroad me1
whose duty called them there. Some.
where about the middle Of the yard:
was an elaborate system Of switches
which made it possible fora train nortl
Of the switch to run south on tract
! number one, and then after passing {
switching tower gradually turn of
from track to track until it ran ava,
. from the oity on track eight or ten O,
twelve, or any other that the yard
master CHANGED to choose. Thi!
switch was called a "puzzle" switch
and indeed it was a quzzle to almos
everyone except the few who had man.
aged to master the intricate design
The switch was worked by a. man IL
the tower who commanded a view O.
the yards an everyone in them, ant
who knew from signals on which tract
to send the flying cars.