CHAPTER XXII

THE LABORER THE FARMER'S GREATEST ASSET

"_Letting down buckets into empty wells and growing old with drawing nothing up._"--COWPER.

Leaving the Rectory I found myself on the highway, seeking a fortune as a berry picker. I heard rumors that men had actually made a stake at the work,--that is, enough money (by rigid economy) to exist in the destructive slums of a great city during the freezing winter months when there is no work to be had.

The roads were lined with men and boys seeking work. The long drought had been exceedingly detrimental to the fruit. It was dwarfed and of inferior quality, which worked a hardship on the farmer as well as on the berry pickers. The farms and farm houses were exceptionally attractive, and seemed to abound with comforts. Many of them were homes of wealth and resembled country seats. The day was frightfully hot. There had been a terrific thunder storm the night before and I was obliged to seek shelter for the night with a number of others in a shed. It was a sleepless night for the rain came in and prevented us from even trying to rest on the bare ground.

As I walked along the new State road, I came to an inviting shady spot by the roadside, near a deep hedge. Almost overcome by the heat and weary from lack of rest and sleep, I lay down with my bundle for a pillow and was just falling asleep when I was suddenly aroused by a voice commanding me to move on. Looking up I saw I was being accosted by a big six-foot bully. In reply to my question, "Why?" he answered, "It makes no difference why, move on."

Looking the man unflinchingly in the eye, I said,

"But it does make a difference why, and I will pretty quickly find out why a man, simply because he is poor and wants to rest on the side of the State road, is denied that privilege."

The insolent swaggerer was nonplussed for the moment. I suppose he thought I was only a poor, starving berry picker or farm hand who, at his command, would cringingly creep on in the boiling sun, like a dog, to another shady spot.

"Who are you?" he then asked.

"I am a laborer looking for work," I replied, "but I am also an American. When I am insolently ordered to 'move on' on a public highway, I'll know the reason why if I have to go to Washington to find out. I know your actions have been tolerated in England and Europe for two thousand years. Since you ask me who I am, I am going to ask who you are."

"I am foreman of this estate," he answered. "This is the country estate of a very rich ex-United States Congressman, and the State road line runs within six feet of the hedge."

"Well, sir," I replied, "I humbly beg your pardon. It is a principle of mine never to ask or take something for nothing, unless it be to draw dividends on a few blocks of nine billion dollars of watered railroad stock. But say, if you would wall this little six-foot strip in, or put up a sign, 'No trespassing,' or 'Beware of the dog,' as others have done, neither your master nor yourself would have further cause to growl."

As I wandered on I overtook an honest-looking man who said he was on his way to a farm near Marlborough where he had worked for several summers and had always pulled out with enough money to carry him, in a way, through the winter. It would have been much nearer for him to have walked the railroad track, he said, but he was told in Newburgh that if he did so he was liable to be arrested by the West Shore Railroad Company. They had arrested a hundred and thirty-eight wandering men at Kingston the day before and put them in jail, and so he thought it best to follow the country road.

A little farther on, near some great elm trees, stood an old stone house. From the gilded signs and the many beer kegs in evidence, I saw at once it was another one of the roadside lamps of ruin. Many men seemed to have gathered in and about the place and without disturbance were resting beneath the trees. I joined them and just as I did so a farmer drove up in an automobile looking for help. Before he had spoken, I asked, "Do you want help?"

"Well, I should say so," he answered. "The farmers are all clamoring for men, and are wondering where the temporary farm hands are this year."

I suggested he might find a few of them in the Kingston jail. He said that because of the recent rains the fruit was ripening so rapidly that it was decaying on the vines for the need of being gathered. Considering that the earnings of the railroad company were augmented by the fruit shipments he granted that a little persuasive argument with the latter might be of help. But did I want work, and would I work for him? I certainly would.

"What do you pay?" I asked.

"A cent and a half a box for strawberries,--that is, if you will stay the season. If not, I will only pay one cent a box." The reason for this I found was that at the last gathering of a crop the fruit is light and the pickers cannot make nearly as much as in the beginning, and becoming discouraged, will quit. No matter if the farmer receives ten or thirty cents a box for his fruit, the picker receives no better wage.

"You will board me, I suppose?"

"Oh, no, you board yourself. We have a good bunkhouse where you can sleep."

"But I have no money. How will I get me something to eat?"

"I will pay you every night at the rate of one cent if you want it."

"But I have no money at all. What will I do for supper and breakfast?"

"Tell any of the grocers in Middlehope that you are going to work for me and they will trust you. You can come to my place and sleep to-night, so that you can begin work in the morning."

Passing on to the village, I asked one of the merchants if he would trust me for a bill of edibles until the following evening. He looked at me hesitatingly. He had been deceived and that made him cautious. When saying that I only wanted a little, he consented and gave me the following bill: bacon, five cents, bread, five cents, coffee, five cents, can of corn, ten cents, total twenty-five cents.

I found later that there have been (and are still) thousands of instances when these willing workers have been denied this confidence and have worked all day in the burning sun without supper, breakfast and dinner.

Reaching the farm I was not shown where to go to sleep. I was told to go to the bunkhouse. I found a number of men already there with an improvised stove of rock and available sticks for fuel. With the aid of my willing contemporaries I managed to prepare and eat my supper. There was a promiscuous pile of filthy blankets to choose from for a bed. I went to the stable for straw on which to spread them, and as I picked up one pair of blankets, a man who had been there for some time said,

"I wouldn't use those blankets. A sick man occupied them last."

"What was the matter with him?" I asked.

"I don't know, but he was pretty sick." Finally choosing a pair of blankets which had the appearance of being a degree more wholesome than the others (and with at least a clean reputation), we laid down. In a short time, we discovered the place was literally alive with night prowlers, which drove us all out under the trees. This was preferable as long as it continued dry and warm, but at two A. M. a rain storm forced us back into the shack.

The next day I put in ten long hours picking berries. When I checked up I had earned just 50 cents--just enough to pay my store bill and buy another meager day's rations. I tried the cherries, the raspberries and the gooseberries, but could do no better. I discovered that the pickers, no matter how clever they might be, did not, or could not, average over fifty cents a day, which, if they had spent it all for food, would only have been sufficient to purchase about two-thirds as much as they would have eaten if they had had enough. For other farm work the pay was one dollar, or one and a quarter dollars per day without board. With a few exceptions board was given with the one dollar. It was extremely difficult to get other farm work in berry picking season. However, I myself was offered by an old farmer one dollar a day and board, to hoe corn.

The next day was Sunday. Could I work on Sunday? Being good Irish church people, they had been taught to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. The old gentleman hesitated slightly but yielded finally when I told him I needed the money. Then, too, I was in much better company working by myself in the field than sitting around the village. He would see what the old lady would say about it.

The old lady had been suffering with the toothache for the past two days and had tried everything from ice down her back to boiling water, when an old woman driving by suggested filling the cavity of the tooth with fine-cut tobacco. This she declared to be a never-failing cure. The old lady tried it, but had swallowed the tobacco, and no mortal, she declared, ever before passed through such a sickness and survived! Consequently life just then seemed very uncertain, and this caused, on her part, a deep reflection on the subject of being very good. But finally she thought it would be all right for me to hoe on the Sabbath day, providing I did my hoeing down in the woodlot, instead of in the open field on the hill.

It was pitiful to see these workers, after a hard day's work, walk several miles to the village store with their few cents to buy their suppers, knowing that they must walk back before they could cook and eat it. Even though a man were not a drunkard, do you wonder that he would spend a portion of that day's pitiful wage for stimulant to create enough force to get back to his camp? All of the country merchants had coffee, tea and sugar done up in five-cent packages ready to hand out. They had many customers for such quantities.

One day, during my short investigation among these, a man was found dead in a barn, where he had crawled to rest. Was it any wonder? He had in his possession only a few cents and a little package of groceries. Is it any marvel that another man was found dead, hanging in an orchard, or that another was killed by an automobile, in the darkness of the night? Seventy-five per cent of these workers were old men or men beyond middle life. They were men of all sorts of trades, as well as the unskilled. A great many were physically infirm, which disabled them from following either their own trade or the more arduous work of the common laborer.

I heard during the time I was among these toilers, the wish expressed many times by them that they, too, could own a garden tract, a bit of land that they could cultivate, a place, however humble, that they could call home. No; men do not, as many will tell you, seek the open fields to _be_ evil, but to _shun_ evil.

There exists to-day in many of the villages, towns and cities of New York, the rule to grant to the police, marshal, or constable, as a perquisite to his office, money for every arrest he makes. In Milton I was told by one of its citizens that the fee was one dollar. Consequently they are on the lookout for poor, unfortunate workingmen. When they find one he is thrown into a dark hole of their city jail or lockup. In one of these villages, this wretched place of detention was partially filled with water when the men were put in. No matter how prosperous the aspect of his farm, the farmer will tell you of the vicissitudes he must continually encounter before his crop is gathered and sold, that many of the farms are carrying a heavy mortgage with an excessive rate of interest which they can not pay off, but can only succeed in living and paying the usury,--that he is at the mercy of the middle man (the commission man) and, above all else, what a time he has with his help, so hard to get, so unreliable when he does get it. If this is all true, do you wonder at it? Why, the horse, the cow and the hogs on these farms are better treated than their help! The animal must be well fed, housed comfortably and kept in good health to be profitable. If these farmers would institute some kind of a recall which would rid them of the code of ethics now practiced among them, or which would force them to practice brotherly love, kindness and justice; if they would create a new religion that will abolish the death-dealing, demoralizing, destructive influences which exist among them now; if they will cease being thoughtless; if they will begin to think,--then the weather will have lost much of its terror. The mortgage will be more easily raised. The faults of the commission man may be overcome and the unpleasant specter of quantity and quality of help will vanish. _Labor is the corner-stone to the foundation of the edifice of prosperity._ It is left to the farmer to make his way easy, his burden light.

Yet some who live in palaces, and many bold charlatans of trade who use the name of philanthropy to guild their shady ways, will still cry, "Why don't the out-of-work man help the farmer? Why don't they go onto the land?" They certainly do not mean in the domain of the Hudson.

In talking with an editor, I once advanced the thought of the advantage of cultivating every acre of the ground from New York to Albany. The astonished editor replied, "Why, would you destroy the scenery of our American Rhine?"

Destroy the scenery! I could not but ask, surprisedly, "What is more beautiful than a cultivated vineyard, or a farm supporting an American home?" But this was what the search light revealed. The great estates of the greatest financiers in the world; the palaces of wealthy brewers; the castles of whiskey distillers; monasteries of the Church of England; Roman Catholic convents; orphans' homes, reformatories for white slaves, States prisons, criminal insane asylums; United States War Schools; government store-houses for high explosives; miles of unsightly brick-yards (of the Brick Trust); acres of decaying old frame shacks; ice-houses (of the Ice Trust;) signs, "Don't trespass" and "Beware of the dog"--and hundreds of hungry, starving men.