The Pensacola journal., May 18, 1911, Page 7, Image 7

About The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985

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SO ride mto New York on
offense. Ine law says
so. Railroad companies
suggested the law and
secured its enactment.
They prefer - to handle
their passenger traffic in
the regular way.
Fares cannot so easily be
collected from passengers who are secreted
around the trucks. Besides, freight train
travelers have gained the reputation of
being uncertain persons. They, sometimes
steal small things that rich persons'would
not think of stealing. Yet, against them as
the law is, patrons of the box-cars pour into
New York at all seasons of the year.
An Ohio boy, one morning last winter,
was in court for beating his way into the
"metropolis. He was only sixteen years old,
and rather small for his age. His coat fitted
him a little too soon and axle-grease was on
it. Hadn't had time to slick up since he was
pulled from the trucks. Still, he was cheer-,
ful. Answered the Court's questions as if it
were a pleasure. Told all about the old folks
at home, and why he left home.
He and another boy craved the big life.
They wanted to be in the midst of some
thing and be something. Only, the other
boy had a little hitch to his ambitions. He
wanted to go to Chicago, where he had an
aunt who, in an emergency, might be in-
duced to provide food.
The boy who stood before His Honor
waved his comrade away.
"I told my chum," he said, "that I
would rather be in New York, broke and
hungry, than be in Chicago with a meal
ticket at every restaurant. I left my chum
right there. I paid my fare as far as I could
and beat it the rest of the way."
The Court, some years back, having
broken into town in substantially the same
way, did not hear the boy's story without
feeling. During the recital, the judicial
mind had gone back to that other day, now
long ago, when he, a penniless lad, had said
good-bye to his native town. So he said to
The YbyVr
"My son, let me commend your judg
ment. Any boy who will ride the trucks to
New York, in preference to going to Chicago
and living with his chum's aunt, has the
right spirit. I think this town needs boys
like you, and I am going to let you stay,
Discharged."
, , Nothing can illustrate better than this
. incident the lure of New York. Perhaps no ,
2 other city ever has so large a percentage of
Vr"the world's population bluffed. A bigger
"y word than "bluffed" is needed here, but it
"-y does not come. The point is that the city
has the power to cast a great spell, ana casts
Si CL. 1 I T 1
it. She makes no comparisons. To make
comparisons would be to admit that there
are others in her class. She says only: "I
am the wonderful city come."
The-call goes north to the edge of the
frozen world; east to the point where the
east is west; south as far as a white man
lives, and west till the west is east. Not
; everybody comes, but everybody hears.
Millions would like to come, but can't.
Everybody would like at least to see the
siren city. And, untold thousands do come.
One railroad thinks nothing of dumping
100,000 strangers into New York in a day.
The reason for so much coming is plain.
Everybody likes to be mixed up with a
success. The bigger the success, the better.
New York is universally regarded as a big
success. It, has the tallest buildings, the
richest men, the whitest "White Way" that
ever cut a streak through the night,- and
some of the most prodigal disbursers of the
circulating medium that ever dazzled any
coramunity.
In a variety of ways comes the message
to mix with this greet success to become
a part of this wonderful bigness. Perhaps
the newspapers and the stage do the most
to spread the lure. New York date-lines
appear over the most important items of
news. There seems to be only one place in
which anything worth while can happen.
Has Mr. Morgan bought an old master or
formed a new trust? Where did he do it?
New York. Has Mr. Rockefeller paid hi3
annual visit to the office of Standard Oil?
-Yes a New York despatch says so. Has
Mr. Carnegie slipped in the icy park and
sprained his ankle? What park? Why,
Central Park, in New York, of course.
And, whenever an Italian opera singer; a
T" . . T m
Russian revolutionist, or an Irish patriot
comes to this country, where does he land?
At New York. What city sends out the
news? New York. s
The Stage's Part
As an advertiser of the glories and splen-
dor of this great town, the stage is second
ttt-L . xt
only to the press. When an actor is in New
lork between seasonsduring the dog
days he may be eating beef and beans and
walking Broadway disconsolately. But, let
him sign up and get out on the road, and the
songs he is paid to sing, or the lines he is
paid to speak, tell a different story. Audi
ences sit back and fonder, how he could
ever leave the town. He sings about "Dear
Old Broadway,'' flashes out in a yachting
frisks over to "Coney Island by the Sea,'
and winds up in the last act at a lobster
palace.
If he doesn't do any of these things, he
poses majestically before a stock-ticker,
becomes increasingly nervous as the ma
chine clicks out its erist. finally sees a
quotation that is supposed to mean a loss
to him of more money than Monte Cristo
ever dared to contemplate, and falls in a
fit while mumbling that his hated rival has
ruined him in order to prevent him from
claiming the hand of Miss Astorbilt.
It's indeed a great life this New York
life as the newspaper despatches and the
stage represent it. It is sometimes pretty
hard to tell what either presentation wfll do
to a rural community. Twenty years ago.
for instance, a Nevada youth went to see a
show in Carson City. The show was that
old classic, "The Two Orphans." In the
cast were extremely few persons besides the
orphans themselves, as railway transporta-
tion and board were both high. But the
show made up in scenery what it lacked
in cast. One scene, in particular, appealed
to the chuckle-faced youth. It was a scene
in which the two orphans "were sitting on
the steps of Trinity Church. The snow was
drifting down over their thin shoulders.
Broadway was thronged with pedestrians.
Horse-cars flew along at eight miles an hour.
Nobody looked at the orphans. But the
orphans, silent as little sphynxes, looked
straight ahead straight up the street.
There was Broadway I The infinite skill of
the scene painter seemed to have carried
the street clear to the horizon. Nothing but
buildings and people and people and build-
ings till they blended, at the finish, into an
mdistinguishable haze of paint.
The Nevada youth could hardly keep his
seat. The painted scene had fired his mind
with an intense desire. He must be off to
New York. All during the show, which he
saw not, though he looked straight at the
stage, he kept his eyes riveted, to the splen
did vista of Broadway. The whole thor
oughfare seemed to him to be a treasure
house of opportunity. Surely, in all this
double row of buildings, there was some
place in which he could get a job. Put him
down where the two orphans were sitting
and nothing could beat him. He would
keep going and going and going; and, by
the great homed spoon, a job would have
to come into his hands before he stopped,
or he wouldn't stop! That was the beauty
of New York, as he then saw it. The place
was so big that a boy looking for a job
didn't have to stop. Always, there was
some other place to go.
Tf ft rr , . ... ,
xamiiy an airs were sucn mat mis ooy
was kept in Carson five years. Then, the
sweep of the current earned him to San
Francisco. He ound work. Did well.
Did as well as any of the young men in
his line. Everybody liked him. He liked
everybody. Everybody was therefore sur
prised when, after a year, he spread the
word that he was about to go. New York
was calling to him. It had been calling to
him ever since the night that he saw the
painted picture of Broadway. He could
dream and wait no longer. He must see the
real.
Kind friends accompanied him across the
bay on the Oakland boat and saw him
aboard the train. In a month, letters began
to sift back from New York. Was it a great
place? Why, it was the greatest place that
ever lay out doors. San Francisco, in com
parison, was a mere collection of dugouts. .
No man who had the brains of a watermelon
would stay in California fifteen minutes if
he could raise the price of a ticket to New
York. Already had a job that couldn t be
duplicated anywhere else. Almost ashamed
to take the salary but he took it.
The New Arrivals First Sensation
In a year he returned, for a short visit,
to San Francisco. He wore a plug hat, a
short coat, and a slight Eastern accent. The
plug hat was a bluff the short coat was not.
He didn't wear a plug hat in New York at
all. He wore one on his visit to San Fran
cisco because he knew it would be the
quickest way to advertise his success in the
East. As a matter of fact he had had no
success in the East, except that he had kept
out of the hands of the police and the under-
.1 111 m
taker. He had been making success, but
hadn't finished it. It took him several years
to finish it to make good on his dream that
began in the Carson "opera" house.
Every office building in New York is filled
with men and women who were snared in
some such way. The city reached out its
long arm and clutched them in whatever
place they happened to be at the theatre,
xi. j. .1, - : j Tin
in the store, or at the fireside. Wherever
the imagination can work, New York's lure
can reach. Everybody who is here once
lived somewhere else; was content to live
there until he had a vision of New York;
was content to live there no longer after he
had had a vision of New York.
This statement seems not to take into
account the tendency of New York's popu-
lation to increase by natural processes,
There ought to be some adult persons in
New York who were born here. It is posi-
tively known that babies are bom in the
great city. But, between birth and matu-
rity, they seem to disappear. Everybody
who amounts to anything and a good many
who don't, came here from somewhere else.
Mr. Roosevelt is one of the few exceptions,
ne is tne omy rresiaent wno was Dorn m
New York.
Here is a striking illustration of the ten
dency of New Yorkers to choose other
E laces in which to be bom. It was given
y the late Edmund Clarence Steadman,
who banked in Wall Street that he might
nave enough money to enable him to write
poetry somewhere else. Mr. Steadman was
at a reception.. He met a young man.
"Are you a New Yorker?" asked the
poet. ' "
"No," was the modest reply. "I live
here, but I came from Michigan."
"Why, coming from Michigan does not
prevent you from being a New Yorker,"
replied Mr. Steadman. "Every. New
Yorker came from somewhere else. I will
venture to say that there isn't a person at
this reception who was bom in New York."
When a favorable opportunity came, Mr.
Steadman asked if there was anybody
among the one hundred present who was
bom in New York. For a moment, there
was as much silence as if he had asked who
would be the first to contribute $100 to
the African heathen. Then, a young woman
pleaded guilty with extenuating circum
stances. She said she was the daughter of a
man who, at one time, was a foreign consul,
accredited to the American metropolis. His
sovereign sent him to New York and he had
to come. Also, in order to avoid the appear-
ance of harshness, he had to bring his wife,
But possibly nobody reaches New York
with quite the same feeling of elation that
is felt by the country boy, or the boy from
the small town. The Metropolitan Tower
is fifty stories high, but he can look down
upon it the first time he passes it provided
he has secured a job. My, but it's good to
get where something is doing! At last, he
is where life centers. He is in the midst of
all the things he has read about. When
there is a ruction in Wall Street, the news
V
I. Mf
- W&i W if
-i f . -.
IT HAS THE WHITEST "WETTE WAY" THAI
comes to him, not as it did in Iowa, but as
if he were a part of the street; for he is so
near. And, at dusk, when the lights begin
to blaze up along the "Great White Way"
ah, it is all just as he had dreamed it to
be! All grand! All surpassingly great!
But, kind friends, he dines at no lobster
palace that evening. Nor do his magnifi
cent jewels glittetin the "horseshoe cres
cent" at the opera. With the money that
he can spare for his. evening meal, he
couldn't buy a lobster's tail, and a diygopds
a.
if
-
box in an alley would fit him better than a
box at the opera. So, he dines poorly for
sixty cents at a side-street restaurant, gets
a glassy eye from the waiter for not giving
a tip, finds a room in which there is no light by
day, nor pure air night or day and goes to
sleep to dream of home and mother,
The next morning, he is awakened by a
miscellaneous assortment of noises, ranging
irom elevated car wheels to horses hoofs.
As he puts on the shirt that mother laun
dered for him, his heart takes a sudden lurch
back to the old roof. He calls his heart
back. He is in New York to make good.
It is up to him to do it. And, by the time
he is ready to go out to hunt for breakfast.
his nerve is all back. The clatter of the
streets has revived him.
His Struggle for Work
With nothing to do but get a job or
starve, he looks for work. He hears that
motormen are wanted on the subway. Half
afraid to offer his services, he nevertheless
decides to do so. On the way to the com
pany's offices, he considers all of the situa
tion's glorious possibilities. Never in the
country did he dare dream that some day
he might make a battery of motors bite off
2.000 horsepower of electricity and snatch
eight loaded cars through the subterranean
night. With his liking for machinery it
would be the ideal occupation. But he
knows nothing of any machinery, except the
plow, the harrow, and the other machines of
the farm.
What does it matter if he doesn't? Far
mers are made into subway motormen in a
few weeks. Electric locomotives are so
simple that anybody can run them, and
automatic devices for preventing accidents
are so nearly perfect that nobody can wreck
a tram. All there is to do is to stand in a
little dark closet at the head of the train,
wear a nice pair of gloves, and twist an
eight-inch lever whenever a station is
reached, or the gong overhead rings.
The good news goes home to the old folks
that their boy is going to run a train in the
New York subway. Oh, if the boy could
only see the mingled sorrow and pride that
light up his mother's eyes when she reads
the letter. It breaks her heart to have her
boy away, but it mends it to know how
am
"v.'-irfA
EVER CUT A STREAK TOTOTGH THE NIGHT
emphatically he has made good in the big
town. Going to run a train driven by elec
tricity! Going to run a train bearing fifteen
hundred human beings, each of whom has
put his life, for a time, in her son's keeping!
Such confidence as the company must have
had in her boy to intrust him with so grave
a responsibility. Oh, it is such a comfort to
her to know that her son, whom she has
loved since she felt his first hrcrt-beat; for
whom she has toiled and suffered and denied
herself it is such a comfort to her to know
on i-
m
mil
ni,ir'llv
that he has been recognized at what she
knows to be his true worth, by the most
wonderful city in the world.
Father's joy is not quite so exquisitely
refined as mother's, because father s brain
is a shade less sensitive to impressions.
Mother's brain, you know, is like a photo
graphic plate that can grab every detail of
a landscape in a thousandth part of a
second. But father, in his quiet way, feels
mighty good. That boy was always his
idol. Promising boy, too. Smarter'n chain
lightning. Hundreds of people had said he
was just like his father.
A year later, what rejoicing there was in
the little home when the boy wrote that he
was coming back on a vacation. Mother
could hardly read the letter, she was so ex
cited. Ran to the fields to tell father. Ran
back to get dinner. Could hardly cook
burned the eggs to a crisp, something she
had not done in thirty years, and had to fry
some more. In such a hurry to put on her
"other dress" and run over to Mrs. Pratt's
to tell her: "My boy is coming home"
The boy came home. When he took
mother in his arms and held her for a full
minute, she couldn't speak. All choked up.
So glad to see him, she couldn't say a word.
And, when she did speak, the first thing she
said, as she looked up into his brown eyes,
was: "Oh, mv boy, how pale you are!
He was pale. He knew it. Subway air
makes no red blood-corpuscles. Kills some
of the red ones that exist. Nor does the
electric light of the subway brown the cheek
as the sunlight browns the cheek of the far
mer. All the year that he had been away,
mother had carried in her mind" the picture
of her farmer boy. Never had dreamed
that her farmer boy would come home with
a grayish-white face. Didn't need to say
she was shocked. Looked it. The boy
caught the message and laughingly replied:
"Oh, mother, all city folks are pale."
Maybe mother believed him. She didn't
say. If she didn't quite believe him, it was
because she remembered that years ago,
when he broke bis arm, he told her, as she
picked him up, that he had only fallen a
little. Told her a story, to keep her from
worrying until he could get his father to go
with him to the doctor. Anyway, there
wasn't time to think about it. Friends were
crowding around. Station agent. Farmers.
A dozen, at least, who had known the boy
all his life. Everybody glad to see him.
Nobody quite at ease. Sent a little thrill
through everybody to shake hands with a
man from New York. Seemed so much like
shaking hands with New York.
His Actual Life
During the week that he remained at
home, the boy was kept talking. Father
and mother constantly asking questions.
Seemed to mother as if she couldn't ask
questions enough. Wanted to get first
hand information about everything of which
she had read. Had he been to the top of the
Metropolitan Tower? No never cared to
take the trouble. My, but how big her boy
had become to think so little of this great
tower so it seemed to her. Had John D.
Rockefeller ever ridden on his train? No,
not that he knew of; but he once pulled
Vice-President Sherman from Wall Street
to Forty-second, and didn't notice that it
took any more electricity. And, had he
seen the ocean? He had not. The nearest
he had come to the ocean was the subway
terminal at the Battery. Could get to the
ocean in an hour, but never cared to bother
about it.
But, notwithstanding that the boy
seemed to have missed everything in New
York that country folk consider worth see
ing, he could not paint too radiantly the
picture of New York life. The only life
worth living. The greatest town in the
world. In short, the boy did what all New
Yorkers do swelled his town and himself
as soon as he was out of town. A New
Yorker never feels so little as when he is in
New York; never so big as when he is some
where else. On Broadway, he may be as
meek as Moses, but a thousand miles inland
he feels like an Ambassador Extraordinary
and Minister Plenipotentiary, officially
charged with the duty of representing New
York in the particular town in which he
may happen to be stopping. Likewise,
New York never seems so big to a New
Yorker as it does when he is not in New
York. The farther he goes, the bigger the
town becomes. And, away out on an Iowa
farm, New York looked -as big to this boy
as the rest of the United States.
Six months after he returned to work, his
mother had an opportunity to see for her
self, just how big 'was New York. A tele
gram told her that her boy had been hurt.
She and father found him in a hospital,
with his head bandaged until they could
barely see his eyes. At the end of his run,
he had tried to cross the tracks to catch
another train back and get to dinner more
quickly. Didn't see a train running in the
opposite direction. Car struck him. Picked
up for dead. Seemed to have a fractured
skulL Fortunately, did not. Revived in
the hospital and would get welL
Oh, but the mother's heart was glad when
she heard the best instead of the worst.
Glad until she and father went to the boy's
room. Net his room in the hospital, but his
room in a lodging-house. Glad until she
saw how miserably he had lived. A dirty
street. A dirty house. A dirty halL A .
cheerless room. Little light Bad air. A
skimpy bed. A frayed counterpane. Not
a decoration, save her own picture, stuck in
the edge of a mirror.
Her boy could stford no better place to
live His pay was only $2.25 a day. That
is, his pay from the company was only $2.25
a day. The lure of New York made up the
rest that was needed to induce him to stay.
Such is life for millions in New York.
Not life as the newspaper despatches de
scribe it. Not life as the stage pictures it.
life as it is. Life as it is for at least three
of the city's five millions. Few comforts.
No prospects. Just work. Sleep a little and
work again. Just work.
A few draw colossal prizes. A few mora
draw good prizes. But if only those should
come to New York who can earn a better
living here than they can elsewhere, a hand
car, running once a day, would almost bring
them in. Ninety-two per cent, of the popu
lation have not drawn enough prizes to
enable them to own their own homes. Yet
people come. Come from every State in the
Union. Come from every town in every
State every hamlet. Cone from Italy,
Norway, Sweden, . Turkey come from
everywhere.
Men come to New York for love of money
and stay for love of life. With infinitesimal
exceptions, they do not get the money.
With no exceptions, they do get the life.
They come here believing the town is full
of money. Before they have been here
many years they know that while the
money is here, it might as well not be.
They can get enough of it only for board
and clothes.
No one who has not been a tenant of a
New York office building can know how
desperately these dreamers struggle before
they wake up. The sign-painters are busy
all the while. One man's name no sooner
goes up on a door than it comes down to
make way for another. One procession is
coming in at the front door and another is
going out the back. The members of the
first procession believe they can crowd in
where others are making money, and the
members of the second procession know
they can't. One man out of a thousand
crowds his way in and thus shows how
nearly impossible it is for one to crowd his
way in.
Constantly the lesson is being taught
that it is all right to come to New York for
love of life, but all wrong to come for love of
money. The chances of success are too few,
even to make it a good gambling proposi
tion. The Italian who comes to New York
is really about the only one who realizes his
financial aspirations. An Italian who gets
a job with a construction gang at $2.50 a
day comes as near as Rockefeller to con
verting his hopes into facts.
The Big Town
Yet there is consolation for the New
Yorker who, having learned his lesson,
settles down to be a small toad in a big pud
dle. He is ahead to the extent that he has
satisfied his love for life, and he possesses the
paradoxical knowledge that no toad of his
size, from any other place, is as big as he is.
More than that, all outside toads cheerfully
recognize this fact, which holds true through
all gradations of society.
A New York vagrant has a craft superi
ority over a Kokomo vagrant. The New
York vagrant can tell how he was once
taken over to "300 Mulberry" and told to
get out of town within six hours. The
Kokomo vagrant can only tell, with a
proper sense of his own unworthiness, that
the village marshal "canned" him.
Also, a New York man worth $20,000 can
throw out his chest before a Milwaukee man
worth $20,000 and the Milwaukee man
will stand for it. Even a man's initials on
his suitcase, with "N. Y." stamped below
them, are enough to throw a certain awe
into the eyes of villagers who see him pick
up his baggage at the station.
So, after all, "bluffed" isn't such a wrong
word to use in describing the effect of New
York's lure upon outside human beings.
New York says: "I am the wonderful city
come." Five millions have come. Almost
all are sleeping under roofs that they do not
own. In 1007, 204,119 were thrown into
jail; 7,486 were picked up for vagrancy;
53,741 applied at the Municipal Lodging
House for free shelter; 10,000 girls began
to lead disreputable lives, and 40,000 others
continued the life they were leading; 800
men and women committed suicide, and a
considerable addition was made to the 150
000 graves in the Potter's Field. ,
A few made fortunes, or increased the
fortunes they had. But the unlucky, no
less than the lucky, the bad no less than the
good they had to come. They had felt the
lure of the town.