But What Affected Me In The Most Lively Manner Was The Wealth Of
This Day-Labourer, Paying A Two Months'
Pleasure visit to the
States, and preparing to return in the saloon, and the new
testimony rendered by his story,
Not so much to the horrors of the
steerage as to the habitual comfort of the working classes. One
foggy, frosty December evening, I encountered on Liberton Hill,
near Edinburgh, an Irish labourer trudging homeward from the
fields. Our roads lay together, and it was natural that we should
fall into talk. He was covered with mud; an inoffensive, ignorant
creature, who thought the Atlantic Cable was a secret contrivance
of the masters the better to oppress labouring mankind; and I
confess I was astonished to learn that he had nearly three hundred
pounds in the bank. But this man had travelled over most of the
world, and enjoyed wonderful opportunities on some American
railroad, with two dollars a shift and double pay on Sunday and at
night; whereas my fellow-passenger had never quitted Tyneside, and
had made all that he possessed in that same accursed, down-falling
England, whence skilled mechanics, engineers, millwrights, and
carpenters were fleeing as from the native country of starvation.
Fitly enough, we slid off on the subject of strikes and wages and
hard times. Being from the Tyne, and a man who had gained and lost
in his own pocket by these fluctuations, he had much to say, and
held strong opinions on the subject.
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