Los Angeles herald., 1906-06-10


work OF n frenzied striker.
Only the night before the man told
me he had promised his sweetheart
that In another month he would have
money enough to marry her and they
would go away somewhere so that he
could get well Of the cough that was
troubling him. They had planned II all
and Il had been so sweet. And now
he would be laid up for a month with
out wages. That meant at the least
another year added to his misery. II
the white plague did not release him.
Teamster In Despair
The tears tricltled slowly down his
cheeks. He looked around him in
agony. He would appeal to his boss.
Perhaps he would pay his doctor bills
and keep his job for him. Somebody
surely in the great city of Chicago
would help him to live. And then the
helplessness OF It chilled him. Thou
sands before him had made the same
appeal. They had received the same
answer:
"The packers could not afford to sup
port lot Of paupers.' His arm bled
afresh as the agony of It wrenched
him
Nothing, nothing but blank misery
and slow death was left for him
The eighth in line was a woman with
a little baby. The beads of perspiration
dropped from the womans s forehead and
her mouth twitched nervously as her
hopeless eyes watched the little one.
The boys purple eyelids were drawn
tight over the bulgng pupils. It's fore
head was all red and swollen with a
great bump near It's right temple
Little Life ls Sacrificed
To the woman the waiting was agony.
Her husband was in the union and had
had to quit work Her son had disap-
peared. Just yesterday her little girl,
with wasted limbs and a look of an
guish even In death, had been laid in
coffin. Today in a last desperate re-
braved the terror of the strikers and
come to the yards for a job. But as
she entered the gate stone had come
from somewhere and had struck the
baby in the head. When she cried out
in horror a hoarse, derisive laugh came
from somewhere and she hurried on
terror stricken.
Was she never to escape? These grim
monsters of fate or We're they human
beings, only ground harder with each
new hardship? If she took the baby
home it might never get well.
Ten of them lived in a garret in a
tenement house. How could anyone
ever expect to get well in d place like
that where the men staggered in drunk
with their weeks pay gone; where the
women in desperation would snatch up
their children and stagger blindly into
the saloon next door; where the chill
dren swore and kicked or cried them
selves hoarse with hunger? Was there
any use in having the baby live to
grow UP to life like that?
Death Enters Line
And then as she looked the baby
gave one last convulsive gasp. 1t was
dead.
The woman stole out and none cared
whence she came or where she went.
The last two In the line moved up as
the woman left, their faces Frightening
as they noted the lessening distance
between them and the doctor The end
one in the line was a little boy. He
might have been eight years of age,
but he looked twelve. His little body
First he clutched his injured wrist with
his well hand. Then he held it up
against him in frenzy of pain. Then
he threw it out before him in a wild
paroxysm of weeping.
He was cuffed by one of the men for
his noise, but he couldn't help it. His
body was weak with heat and INSULT
cient food and when the nerves in his
wounded hand gave such great jumps
into cog in a wheel and had come out
terribly mangled. The men around had
said that 1t was a wonder he kept his
senses. He did, and he staggered over
to the DOCTORS office with scarcely a
whimper but now the pain had come
with such terrible force that his little
will broke at last and he screamed in
very anguish.
Where Souls Are Crushed
And so the line moved on, gradually
diminishing as the doctor cut and
sewed and swore. And thus the great
packing houses moved on and on. The
human lives that were lost by accidents
counted for nothing.
That strong men gradually became
weaker and weaker in their tester beds
of dirt and filth was nothing.
That human souls were sold to keep
a place in this great establishment of
grind and greed was thought Of only
as a joke.
Thus the weary days and nights of
horror dragged on.
Five days! Each hour fraught with
fear of death from the mob without or
peStilence within.
Five days, each seemed an eternity
Every waking hour the women about
me worked as / did with such fever
ish intensity that the brain was
numbed and only the throbbing pulse
showed that the heart still moved.
The Liberation
The nights were worse than the days.
Surrounded by the outcasts of a great
city whose coarse jokes and ribald
songs filleC our brief waking hour be-
tween toll and inconsistencies. For
we all slept like the dead only arous-
ing when some girl would break down
with the strain and rend the darkness
with shrieks of hysterical laughter or
notwithstanding sob. For weeks after
left the place : would awaken in the
night with the awful sounds ringing in
my ears.
The terrible filth of the packing
houses, the awful lives of those un-
fortunates whom / worked beside, their
misery and degradation were scenes 1
could not crowd from my mind for
weeks
Then came my Liberation. Oh, the
JOY of breathing once more the pure air
God intends human beings to brea thei
The sunlight! And pure water My