The day book. [volume], November 01, 1913, LAST EDITION, Image 18

About The day book. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1911-1917

Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL

                
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THE BREAKER BOY BY CLARENCE S. DARROW
(Copyright, 1913, by the Newspaper Enterprise Association.)
John McCaffery was eleven years
old when he became a man. Five
years before this, his father and
mother, with their four-children and
steerage tickets, sailed oat of the
Queenstown Harbor, bound for the
United States. They had heard of
America all Irishmen had they
knew that America had no English
landlords; no rack-rented tenants;
no hopeless mefi and ragged women
and hungry bqys and girls. So, as
they stood on the steerage deck and
looked through the wire netting at
the fading white houses and green
fields of their native land, Owen and
Bridget were light of heart. Beyond
the great turbulent ocean, were con
tentment, equality and wealth, a
home for themselves and a brilliant
future for the four children who,
half in fear and half in wonder, were
looking out at the white gulls and
the white crested waves.
Two weeks later they landed in
New York, were rushed through Cas
tle Garden and hurried to the rail
way train, where they set out for
Scranton, Pa.
Within a few days Owen had found
a job in the mines, opened an account
with a "company" store and rented
a "company" house, with a kitchen
and parlor below and two little bed
rooms above. Down under the kit
chen floor was a hole in the ground
which they called a cellar, and some
rough wooden steps led to the bot
tom from the side of the house. The
hut was closed with boards which
ran up and down; the inside was
without paper or even plaster; while,
here and there, the cracks let in the
daylight, and, through the winter, the
wind and shifting snow. Owen and
Bridget were a trifle disappointed in
their home. In their little stone hut
in their far-off island, they had never
dreamed that a house like this could
be found in a land so rich and free;
but they were starting- life m a new, went to the mill.
strange world; so, with strong hopes
and brave hearts, they set to work
to make the best of what they had,
never doubting that the looked-for
mansion would soon be theirs.
Owen went to work in the coal
mines five hundred feet beneath the
ground. Every morning he stepped
on board a car, grasped his dinner
pail in one hand, while he clutched
the iron rail in the other, and held
his breath until he was dropped to
the bottom; then, at night, he went
back to the foot of the pit and board
ed the car to be taken again to the
top of the earth.
But this story is about Johnny,
so we have no time to tell more of
Owen, except that one day a great
piece of rock broke off from the roof
of the chamber where he worked and
fell squarely upon him, crushing him
to death.
The miners took him to the top of
the shaft and back to the little hut,
and consoled the helpless widow and
children as best they could, and then
followed him to the grave, and the
story of his hopes and struggles was
told.
Johnny was almost eleven when
they laid his father in the little con
secrated ground and put the wooden
cross above his head. He was at
school the day the rock came down,
and had done so well that he was in
the third reader, and had reached
"division" in the arithmetic.
Johnny's older brother was already
tending a door in the mine, and his
listers were in the public school.
Some years before, a wise good man,
seeing how scant was the miner's in
come, had built a lace mill-so that his
girls could earn something to help the
family along. So one night when the
older sister left the school, she care
fully packed her books and slato and
took them home, and tne next day