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Jim Blaisdell Speaks

By Elizabeth Y. Rutan

O you think there are always jobs enough for men who are willing to work? I've heard men say that, before now. We used often to discuss the question, Harry Baxter and I, and that was the stand he took.

As long as I've got two hands," says he, "I can support myself and my wife.'

That was before he and Jenny were married. They'd gone together ever since they were in the infant class at Sundayschool, and we were all interested, for Jenny was out-and-out the prettiest girl of our set, and I never knew a feller that folks liked better than they did Harry. It was queer, too. He wasn't handsome, and he didn't talk a great deal; and when he did, he had an odd sort of impediment in his speech-stopped right in the middle of a word, and you could count ten before he could go on again. It made it a little hard for him with strangers, but with folks that knew him, well-it's just as I said, I never see a feller people liked better. He was sort of lovable, so to speak. You felt better when he was in the room, and you wished he'd stay.

He went through the high school, and he was the only one of us fellers who did, and Jenny was terrible proud of him. She'd had to leave when she got through the grammar, and she lived with her aunt, who kept a lodging-house, and Jenny worked for her board. But she didn't stop studying for all that. I think it sort of wore on her, though--working all day and then going to evening high school and literature classes at night.

But Jenny was terrible ambitious, and by the time she was twenty and Harry was twenty-one, she was, as I say, the prettiest girl of the set, but the most delicate-looking, too.

Well, that's the way I feel; but I expect I'll get a chance to rest after we get married."

I guess she did, too. She braced up wonderfully, for a while. They had a pretty little home.

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Four rooms and a bath," Jenny used to say, for that was a little uncommon. It got to be quite a meeting-place for our set, and the church folks complained we didn't tend up to the sociables a bit well after Harry and Jenny got married.

They used to talk to me about their affairs a good deal, as Harry and I'd been chums since we were in the lowest room in the grammar, and we'd roomed together for two years before he was married. I remember we discussed the life insurance question, up and down. Jenny was set against it; but Harry he'd made up his mind it was the best way to save. Why! it's great," says he; "and the beauty of it is you've got to do it, once get started, or your policy'll run out and the whole business goes for nothing. That's what I call an incentive to saving."

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After the baby came, Jenny didn't hold out any longer against insurance. I think life had begun to scare her a little, and she didn't feel so capable as she used to. So they took on the policy-only five thousand dollars, but that was a big lump out of their income, once in six months. It's altogether too much," says I. "Nonsense!" says Harry. Why, it would be fairly criminal for us not to save that much, with the steady job I've got. And if anything happens to me, Jim, you'll see Jenny places it so's to get the most out of it."

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He really was fixed very well. He'd learned stenography, evenings, while he was in the High School, and he got a job She said to me once, "Jim," says she, with a big boot and shoe firm the week "did you ever hear of the woman

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after he graduated. I don't imagine Harry's so terrible clever, but, as I said, folks used to take to him, and he was ever

lastingly faithful and pleasant; and that counts-as long as you're among friends. It was in '93 that trouble began to

come to a good many of us, and it was like lightning out of a clear sky to Harry. His firm failed late in the fall; went all to smash all of a sudden, and the senior partner died of heart disease two days after.

I went over to the flat that night, as soon as I'd seen it in the papers, and I found them pretty well broke up. The baby was a year and a half old then, and they'd let it stay up longer that night for comfort. It was the brightest little chap you ever see, and Harry and I always wanted to play with it after supper; but Jenny, says she,

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No, boys; that baby's going to be brought up by rule. I haven't read psychology for nothing these last three years."

When Jenny used large words, Harry and I generally give in; and the baby was brought up by rule, and I must say it worked.

But to-night it seemed as if they just couldn't let it out of their sight. Harry was cuddling it in his arms when I came in, and kept trying to make it say Uncle Jim, which he vowed it could and I vowed it couldn't.

It made a sound with its lips like a small steam radiator, and Harry insisted that was "Jim."

We got down to hard pan after a while, though all of us hated to begin; but Harry kept the baby cuddled in his arms, and Jenny never said a word, even when it went off to sleep.

He was pretty cheerful, and he said again, as he'd said so often when he'd heard of other men that'd lost their jobs, that he guessed something was wrong if a man with two hands couldn't support himself and his wife.

"And baby, too," he said, giving the little chap a squeeze that woke him up and made Jenny take him off to bed.

When she got back, Harry was talking about his insurance, and saying what a comfort it was knowing Jenny'd be all right if anything happened to him.

"And I can always shoot myself," said he, trying to joke, "if worst comes to worst."

Jenny didn't like it, and she began to cry, which wasn't a bit like her; and Harry tried to turn it off, and talked about their plans; but he stammered more than

I'd heard him since we had a master he hated in the grammar-school. Jenny told me next day that he went all to pieces when I left; but he stuck to it while I was there that it wouldn't be hard to find another job.

Perhaps it wouldn't, under ordinary circumstances; but that wasn't any ordinary winter, as any one can tell you who knows anything about the matter.

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Twenty thousand men out of work in this city," one paper had it, and there was a terrible kick-up when that report came out. Folks that were comfortably fixed, with money in the bank, vowed it was just sensationalism; or, if it was a fact, a large proportion of 'em were hoboes. I'm not setting up to decide. I'm only telling you Harry Baxter's experience.

He kept a stiff upper lip for some time, and insisted that when the insurance came due he should pay it, job or no job, if he had the money.

"Why, good gracious !" he said, "anybody'd think you thought this thing was going to last. It stands to reason that a strong, healthy man's going to be able to support his family. There's something wrong, sure, if he can't."

Well, there seemed a good many things wrong that winter. Finally I gave up my room and came over to board with them. They let me have the dining-room, and we all ate in the kitchen. We said we didn't mind, but we did. We'd taken a lot of satisfaction in that dining-room.

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Harry kept on looking up jobs. He stopped buying papers, and used to go to the library and look up Wants" there, and there weren't many he didn't apply for. But things seemed to all go against him. The stammering was always a difficulty, and I noticed it grew on him as he got downhearted.

"Jim," says he, "if there's a blamed thing I haven't applied for, I'd like to hear of it. I tried for a place in a barber's shop yesterday, and this morning I offered to go as a sandwich man, but I was too tall to fit the boards."

He was big-a six-footer-but not over strong, never having had much out-of-door life; and I used to think that if he'd got some of the jobs he tried for there'd soon have been nothing left for Jenny but the insurance money he talked so much about. Then I was taken sick. Jenny nursed

me for a few days, but one night I was out of my head all night, and they had the doctor.

"Typhoid," said he, " and we must get him to the hospital at once."

That's the last I knew of Harry and Jenny for three months, for it was nearly that before I was out and about again. And they'd simply dropped out of sight. No one had heard a word of them for weeks, and what happened I learned afterwards, mostly from Jenny.

They actually had got down to their last five-dollar bill the week I left, and not a ghost of a sign of anything coming in. Jenny'd just made up her mind to see if she could get something to do, and let Harry look after the baby, when a letter came from her aunt, who'd moved to Lawrence. She kept a mill boardinghouse there, and she wrote that Jenny could come to her with the baby, and work for her board; and that would give Harry a better chance. She said there was no use of his coming there, though, for men were being discharged all the time; and she intimated pretty plain that she didn't want him, and Harry never was the kind of a fellow to push himself where he wasn't welcome.

At first it didn't seem as if they could do it, for, as I said, they hadn't been parted since they were kids, and I never see two people more bound up in each other.

"Harry," says Jenny, "if it wasn't for the baby, I wouldn't think twice of it," and Harry knew that all right.

"What'll we do with the furniture?" says she.

"Sell it," says he; and Jenny just cried at that, though I can tell you she hadn't done much crying all through.

She said it all come over her that this was the end of things-being respectable, and bringing her family up to nice ways, and all the things she and Harry had planned for years and years.

"Well, they did sell it, wedding presents and all, and they divided the money, which wasn't so awful much, let me tell you. Then Harry made a foolish move, without telling Jenny. He paid the insurance that was just due, and it left him pretty near dead broke. But he had an awful horror of dying and leaving Jenny and the baby unprovided for,

Jenny left for Lawrence, and Harry knocked round in Boston for another month, getting a job now and then, but not enough really to live on. They'd just started the five-cent restaurant, and there wasn't a steadier customer than Harry. It was all right for a little, but it couldn't have been much fun living that way to a man who'd had Jenny for 'most three years.

Then he heard that things were picking up some in New York, and, having a little money, he went on there.

He told me that as he stood on the deck of the Fall River boat at night looking at the water, it seemed as if the devil himself was at his elbow urging him to jump in and end the whole business.

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"And I tell you, Jim," said he, "it was the life insurance saved me, that time. knew it was eight weeks yet before the time was up in the suicide clause, and I'd be a scamp to put an end to myself now and leave Jenny without a penny."

It struck me the thing would 'a' worked even better if he hadn't had any insurance at all; but that was his way of looking at it.

He found a cheap lodging-place in New York, and then he began to tramp again; and he tramped and tramped, from Harlem to the Bowery, and spent his coppers on the ferries to Brooklyn and Jersey City, and all with the same result-wearing out shoe-leather and spending pennies. He gave up his room after a little, and took to getting a bed in the night lodginghouses he was nearest. You might try that some time, if you think it was fun for a feller brought up the way Harry'd been.

Finally he applied at the places where work was being provided, street-sweeping and such; you read about that, of course, and how you might find more than one man with white hands keeping New York streets clean. He got some jobs that way, but this time his lack of family was against him. Of course men with wives and children got the first chance, and that was all right, too, and he knew it was.

Harry'd kept himself looking pretty respectable, and, as I said, he had a taking sort of way with him, and one of the women at Rivington Street, where they gave out the work, got to talking with him one morning.

She was more Harry's sort than he'd seen in a long day, and he told her about

Jenny and the baby; and the girl seemed to even understand the things he couldn't tell her.

"It's a shame," says she. "It just breaks my heart. I don't know what we're coming to, and my own father discharged fifty of his men yesterday, and cut down the pay of the rest. He's a good man, I know that; and when he told me he had to do it, I had to believe him. But it seems as if I hadn't any right to the bread I eat or the clothes I wear.

"Can you do heavy work?" and she looked at him as if she doubted it, for doughnuts and beans don't give a man what you'd call a hearty look, after he's had 'em for pretty steady diet.

"I'd rather die doing it than live without," says Harry.

letter that pretty nearly finished him. Jenny wrote this time that the baby was sick and cried all the time, and her aunt couldn't have her in the house any longer. She'd taken a room, and as soon as the baby was better she should put him into the day-nursery and get work in the stocking-mill.

Harry couldn't stand that. At first he thought he'd start for home, and then he realized that would just make a bad matter worse. So he put ten dollars out of the twelve dollars he'd got that night into an envelope, and wrote Jenny he was getting on fine and would send for her presently, and on no account was she to leave the baby.

He'd got just three dollars in his pocket, and he thought he could stick it out till Well, so would I," said she, and she the fortnight was up and he got paid off asked him to wait a minute.

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"I've written a letter," said she, when she came back, "to a man I did a favor for once. He's a contractor, and he takes on men all the time. If he has any work, he'll give it to you. Good-by!" And when she shook hands the tears were in her eyes, and she said, "I shall think about your wife. I like to read psychology

myself."

Well, Harry got the place. The contractor said the foreman had just discharged a man for laziness, and Harry could take his pick and go to work. It was 'aying a street railway in upper New York.

So at last he'd got a steady job the thing he'd been looking for all winter. It's true he hadn't scarcely spent a day outdoors in his life, and the heaviest work he'd ever done was carrying coal-hods for Jenny; and now he was out in the slush and rain from morning till night, and at work with the pick ten hours a day. But things like that didn't count the winter of '93, and the papers were full of how a man ought to be thankful for a chance to earn his bread.

And Harry was thankful. A dollar a day means something to a man who's been living on doughnuts and beans. He stuck to it a fortnight, continuing to be thankful; living a little better, so's he wouldn't break down, but saving all he could, for Jenny wrote she wasn't feeling well and had had to have the doctor.

The day he was paid off came another

again.

Well, perhaps some men could, but it makes a difference how you've been brought up. Harry told me he used to eat the peel to the bananas he bought, nights when he was tramping New York streets and resting in doorways when the policeman wasn't looking.

He got through some nights that way, for the sake of saving the dime he'd have had to pay for a bed.

"Of the two," said he, "food and sleep, food seemed the most desirable, considering what you got for a bed."

Once he put in the whole night in a doorway, and the next morning he thought Jenny was frying sausages, and he was ashamed of himself that he'd overslept and hadn't made the fire. And all day, when he was at work with the pick, he kept smelling the sausages. It made him sick and faint, and he couldn't think of anything else, not even of Jenny or the baby, or what he was going to do; but just sausages and griddle-cakes, and all the things she ever fried for breakfast.

That night he went to an eating-house and ordered them all.

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from Jenny, and she said the baby was worse, and the doctor was afraid it wasn't going to get well. Its food didn't nourish it, he said, and he recommended food that cost a dollar a bottle. Jenny was pretty near crazy, not knowing what to do.

"We never ought to have separated, Harry," she wrote. "We both of us own the baby, and we ought both to have stuck to him." She'd got to the point, too, where she didn't much know what she was doing or saying.

Well, there was Harry with his steady job the thing he'd been tramping after all winter, but with no money in his pocket to keep him alive, and his baby dying, two hundred and fifty miles away. Perhaps you can imagine how he felt.

He tramped all night that night, and by morning there wasn't a great deal of work in him. He knew he couldn't stick it out much longer or he'd drop in the traces, so he went to the foreman to say he was going to leave and would like his money.

The foreman said he could leave all right, but he'd have to wait for his money till Saturday night, when they paid off. Why was that, you want to know? Well, it was the rule, as Harry might have known if he hadn't been new to the business.

An unfair rule, you think?

Oh, not altogether. That's inexperience again. Most rules of that sort benefit both parties, only, naturally, they don't fit all cases.

Harry tried to explain the circumstances, and he began to stammer and the words wouldn't come.

"You blamed fool," said the foreman, "you're drunk; that's what's the matter with you," and he turned his back upon him.

Harry staggered back to his pick again, and I dare say he did act drunk; and the foreman couldn't be blamed very much for classing him in with every-day experiences.

One thing Harry knew-if he could get discharged, for some fault of his own; he'd get his money down, for that was something he saw every day. So he tried the laziness dodge, and it wasn't hard, on an empty stomach, to make it seem pretty genuine. That afternoon the foreman didn't take any notice of him; and next morning he would swear at him when he passed, but discharge him he wouldn't,

and Harry hadn't spirit enough left to act noisy drunk, for he'd eaten nothing that day but a biscuit.

At noon he give it up, too sick to even stay on the spot, threw down his pick, and flung up the steady job he'd tramped all winter to get. He hadn't a cent in his pocket, and but one idea in his head-that the time of the suicide clause in the lifeinsurance policy was up next day, and the best thing he could do was to put an end to himself, and then Jenny'd have money enough to buy food for the baby.

I guess he'd have done it fast enough if Providence hadn't interfered. He managed to get down as far as Fleischman's that night-you've heard of the bakery where they gave away stale bread at midnight every night.

There was a line of men 'way down Broadway, sitting on the curbstone, waiting for bread.

A tough crowd?

Well, I s'pose so. Harry looked tough by this time. Some experiences have that effect, continued long enough.

He got in line and he sat on the curbstone. While he waited, he sort of dozed, and he says he kept thinking about the old times at home, and how once the whole set of us fellers got hauled up by the cop, when we were little shavers, for playing chalk corners, which was against the law. He thought he was nearer the police station than he'd been any time. since then, and he was trying to find out whose fault it was. He kept saying to himself:

"There's something wrong when a man can't support himself and his family.”

Then the man next him yanked his arm, and Harry got his bread when his turn came. How he put in the rest of the night he could never remember. But the next thing he could tell about was being at the post-office inquiring for a letter, and thinking he'd like to know how things were with Jenny and the baby for the last time.

When he saw my writing-for it was a

Lest this should seem an exaggerated view of labor possibilities, it may be said that the facts stated above, and, indeed, all of the story so far as relates to the experience of "Harry" in seeking work, are precisely those of actual occurrence in a case brought to the author's attention. A" Weekly Payment Law" has been enacted in Massachusetts to protect workingmen from such emergencies as this, and the Consumers' Leagues make it a necessary qualification of a "fair house" that it should pay its employees weekly.

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