Daily Arizona silver belt., 1907-12-06
IN A STEEL MILL DISTRICT.
Life of Men Who Daily Face Death for
 Q Few Dolalrs.

 Immediately west of the mills of tho Illinois Steel company, at South Chi | cago, there is colony about three quarters of mile long, and quarter of mile wide which has no counterpart anywhere on. the globe. There are il that colony from 1000 to 10000 men of thirty different nationalities, speak ing in thirty different tongues, and liv. ing in thirty different ways.
 To the stranger it might seem as if these thirty countries had each sent . number of their men as exhibits for a sort of international living museum But this is not the case. The men were driven from home by poverty, and they came to South Chicago to work in the steel mills and better their conditions. Nearly all of them are men in the prime of life-under thirty. The greater part of them are unmarried, and of those who are married but a small number have their families here.
 Most of them stay here certain period. save few dollars, and return to their native land, where they spend the rest of their days tilling the soil six days in the week and telling the won- ders they have seen in Ameritsa' on the seventh day oyer glass of vodka or a jug of kvas.
 A few having families in this eoun- try work until they are ineapacitated, either by accident or through natural causes, or until they reach the age limit -forty-fve to fifty Then they live on what their children earn or else they keep boarders. Of the 6,0O0 or 1000 immigrants of the Slavic races, about 800 are listed by the company as being able to speak English. To the rest the English language and Amer jean customs are sealed books.
 To the superficial observer the life of most of these immigrants may seem primitive They wear the same shirt for weeks. They seldom undress when they go to bed, especially those working at night and sleeping in the daytime. lighthouses are unknown in that viein- ity and the congestion in the houses where they live is more than most civil ized men having an income of S10 or $l2 week, as those people have, would submit to.
 But this unnatural life, unnatural even to them, is the result, not of saw agery, but of the strange conditions and harsh surroundings with which they are confronted upon their arrival here. America to them is not country for people to live in, to have homes, and families, but merely a country to work in, to make few dollars in, and to get out of as fast as one can.
 Legendary heroes braved the dragon in their search for golden hoards. These mill workers, men of more or less prim- tive instincts, coming from primitive environments, brave the dragons of modern progress and industry, the most complex and dangerous machinery, to earn few dollars with which to pay back taxes and redeem their soil from the hands of an oppressive and despotic European regime. Duty and necessity, not adventure, bind them to their task, and the minute these duties and neces- sities are met they leave the mills and furnaces for the more congenial life of their native villages
 The supervisor of labor of the Illinois Steel company says that this hetero- geneous population is ''peaceable, quiet, honest, industrious, and intelligent. v
 A policeman was watching crowd of Bulgarians, Servians, Croatians, and goodness knows how many other ma tionalities, as they were entering the gate, took slightly different view of them.
 "Much home life among theml" he was asked
 "Home life2 l should say so. They live twenty-five and thirty-fve in one room, so there must be home life," he answered not without shudder. The policeman then told of certain places in the neighborhood where nearly 100 people lived in the same space and mum Der of rooms which an American work ingman s family of five would occupy. n I. IT.