SCRIBNERS MAGAZINE. JIJLY, 1892. AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. By Joseph Kirkland. CHICAGOS plague-spots are rather red than black; blotches marking excess rather than insufficiency. Vice and crime are more characteristic of a new, young, busy, careless, prosper- ous city than is any compulsory, inevit- able misery. An English philanthropist who lately visited Hull House (Rev. Mr. Barnett, Warden of Toynbee Hall) re- marked, in taking his leave, that the prevalent dirt and flagrant vice in Chi- cago exceeded anything in London ; but that he had seen scarce any evidence of actual want. The West is the paradise of the poor. And the purgatory of the rest of us, adds some fine lady who agonizes over the servant problem. Well, even if this were true (which it is not), it would be better than the reverse. The paradise of the rich, based on the purgatory of the poor, has endured long enoughin the older lands. How the other half lives, in Chi- cago, is pretty much as it chooses.~~ Americans born, and the better nat- ures among the foreign born (supposing them to have physical strength), can se- lect their own kind of happiness. If they choose the joy which springs from sobriety, they can have it in plenty. If they prefer the delight of drink, that also is abundant. A solid devotion to work and saving gives a house and lot, a comfortable and well-taught family, and a good chance for children and grandchildren, who will take rank among the best, employing laborers of their own, and perhaps, alas! looking back Familiar Scene in an Underground Lodging. with mortification on their laboring an- cestors. An equally solid devotion to drink gives vice, crime, want, and (what we shonld call) misery; but this is a free country. The latter class, like the former, are exercising their inalienable right of self-government. They abso- copyright, 1892, by charles Scribners Sons. All rights reserved. Vot. XII. No. 1. 4 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. lutely do not want our cleanliness, our savings-accounts, our good clothes, books, schools, churches, society, prog- ress, and all that, unless they can have them without paying the pricetemper- ance ; and they cannot so have them. Half of the other half belong strictly to the first-named class, a tenth to the last-named, and the rest pursue a mid- dle course. Some rise from the middle to the upper; the others live along, hav- ing ups and downs and furnishing the recruits to keep up the numbers of the lower, the submerged tenth which, happily, has not the faculty of maintain- ing itself by direct reproduction. The city has no East End, White- chapel, or Mulberry Street region; no locality given over to great hives of helplessness, since there is no quarter which was built up for fine residences or business blocks and afterward de- serted and turned over to baser uses. The most ancient house in town (but one) is not fifty years old, and the aver- age scarcely twenty. Therefore the no trace in the new, spacious mart on the edge of the Grand Prairie. Rooms are sublet to individuals and families, yet it is not in tall, huge rookeries built for the purpose, but in smaller, lower structures, outside the limits of the Great Fire, which destroyed the whole middle district----cleared it of weeds to make way for a sturdier and healthier growth. If ever the time comes when the sky-scraping structures of to-day are deserted by the uses for which they are now occupied because they are in the geographical and busi- ness centre of the city, then there may be in Chicago gigantic human hives of wretchedness such as exist in London and New York. But as Chicago can spread north, south, and west, it is dif- ficult to imagine a state of things when the present business district sball not be what it is. The lay of the land is against lo- cal congestion. The river, with its main stem running east and west and its sprawling branches running north and tenement-house evil, as it is known in south, trisects the whole plain into New York and London, shows almost North Side, South Side, and West Side. A Chicago Underground Lodging. AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. These in turn are dissected into small- er patches by the railways, which come to the very centre of population, and radiate thence in all directions except due east, where the lake maintains a glorious ventilation, moral and mate- rial. There is no Sailors Quarter, no place where Jack ashore hastens to spend in a week the savings of a year; gets drunk as soon as possible, and stays drunk as long as possible, to balance his weeks or months of enforced abstinence. The sailors here have only a week or less afloat at one stretch, and they spend, every winter, several months on shore, when they go mining or lumbering or pursuing whatever calling suits their fancy. Many of them are family men good, sturdy fellows, not distinguish- able from the average of intelligent tradesmen. For depth of shadow in Chicago low life one must look to the foreign ele- naents,* the persons who are not only of * Of Chinamen there are about two thousand in chicago, living, as a general rule, in one quarter of the citySouth Clark Street, adjoining the line occupied by the Lake fihore and eastern Illinois Railways, running eastward alien birth but of unrelated bloodthe Mongolian, the African, the Sclav, the semitropic Latin. Among them may be found a certain degree of isolation, and therefore of clannish crowding; also of contented squalor, jealous of inspec- tion and interference. It is in the quar- and southward. and the Rock Island, running westward. Of Italians Chicago has many thousands, part of whom live in the South Clark Street neighborhood, and a larger number only a few squares away, on the West Side, across the south branch of the river. Besides the light common labor of street-cleaning, scavengering, etc., they control, practically, all the great fruit-business of the city, and some of them are getting rich at it. Yet the homes of the majority are among the most lowly and squalid in the city. Educated Italians of the upper classes are handsomely housed in some of the fashionable streets. The Poles and Bohemians inhabit a southwestern quarter, where their impossible names occupy the sign-boards and their unbeantiful faces strike the eye and haunt the memory. They are hard workers and not extravagant, and though crowded they are not congested, though poor they are not in want. The colored pebple have done and are doing remarkably well, considering the disadvantages and discouragements under which they live. They are not largely the supporters of the grog-shops. Their be- setting sin is gambling. They are industrious rather than hard-working, docile rather than enterprising, and economical rather than acquisitive. There are impedi- ments to any accumulation such as their white neighbors engage in. For instance, suppose one of them to invest his savings in a Building Society, he would find, when his lot was ready for him, that he would be unwelcome to his neighbors of a lighter skin. Even as a renter he is only acceptable in regions devoted to his race. As one of them said to me~ obody thinks a colored man fit for anything above being a porter. Still, as I said, there is a very perceptible advance in the race; and it shows but little of poverty or dependence, and still less of crime. 5 Sunday Afternoon in the Italian Quarter. 6 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. ters inhabited by these that there are down many steps; hence the name of to be found the worst parts of Chicago, the locality, The Dive. I once saw the most unsavory spots in their moral men carrying into one of the darkened and material aspects. entrances here an immense bunch of V green bananas, which hung down between them like the grapes of Esheol in the old primer. One can only fancy the atmosphere in which this wonderful fruit would hang to ripen, and hope that the ripening pro- cess is one of exhalation, not of inhalation, during the week or more which must elapse before it appears, yellow and mellow, to be sold from the way si d e fruit-stand, or be dragged slowly about the streets in the wagons attend- ed by the dark-skinned ped- lers as they troll forth, in the sonorous Italian tones, Banano-o! Fi, Ri, Ba- nano-o-o-o ! A bad state of things exists under the shadow of this via- duct, and under the inclined planes by which the traffic of each street it crosses is raised to its level. This is easy to believe, but it is hard to im- agine just how filthy, how squalid, how noisome, how abhorrent it all is. Walking along between inhabited houses and the brick abut- ments of the raised way is like walking between the walls of a sewerlike it to every sensesight, smell, hearing, and feeling. Twelfth Street is encumbered by a The adjacent buildings are mostly of long viaduct, reaching from Wabash woodsmall, low, rotten, and crowded. Avenue, westward, across the south In no case have I found one family oc- branch of the river, ending on the west cupying more than two roomsoften side very near the starting-point of the only one. Here and there would b& Great Fire of 1871. The viaduct nearly seen an attempt at cleanliness of floor fills the street, and from it one looks and bedclothing, but nowhere even a into the second stories of the taller pretence of sweeping of halls and stair- houses, and over the roofs of the short- ways, or of shovelling out of gutters er. One has there the advantages for and other foul conduits. What squalor, observation possessed by the fabled filth, crowding! The constant feeling of devil on two sticks. This is the hab- the visitor is, how dreadfully wretched itation of the Italian proletariat, these peopleought to be. To get to the main floors of these Ought to be, but are not. They are squalid habitations one must climb chiefly the lower class of Italians, born AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 7 and bred, probably, to the knowledge of actual hunger, which here they must rarely feel. I went among them re- cently; there were scarcely any men visible ; the swarms were chiefly of wom- en and children. The men were away, largely, no doubt, attending to the fruit business and scavenger work which have been mentioned. The women were universally caring for their innu- merable children, and these latter, es- pecially the boys, played, shouted, ca- reered about the halls and stairways, yards and roofs, in uncontrolled freedom and gayety. Two or three of them had found a great turnip, or some such vege- table, and split it in pieces, which they displayed in a row on a board beside a gutter; no pretence of having any customersit was merely the exhibition of an in- herited instinct for keeping an Italian fruit-stand! In the corner of a squalid hallway, just outside of the ma- ternal door (there not being an inch of spare room within) a bright - eyed little girl had ar- ranged a quite respectable im- itation of a floor-bed (both cov- erlet and stuffing being rags), and on it lay a dirty, dilapidated, flaxen - haired doll. The girls instinct, too, was showing itself. Within the room the mother, with head bound up, as is the universal custom of her kind, was attending to some duties; a child of two or three years sat staring at the intruder, and on the floor stood a wash-tub over which was bending (and really working) a mite of a girl not more than six years old. Her little arms could scarcely reach the grimy liquid in the bottom of the tub, but she did the best she could, and up and down the tin wash - board sounded her tiny knuckles, handling some dingy, dripping stuff or other, she scarce- ly pausing to look up and notice who had opened the door. Here were a few men, more women, and most children; but no young un- married women. One wonders where are the grown girls. They are not in service in private families; such a thing is unknown here; and they are not adapted to the business of shop-girls. It is to be hoped that they are engaged in the innumerable handicrafts that pre- vail; paper-box and paper-bag mak- ers, tobacco-handlers, book-folders and stitchers, etc. The Hull House ladies say that they marry early in their teens, and that many of them do bits of plain sew- ingthe mere finishing of trouser-legs, etc.at wonderfully low rates, and in wonderfully large quantities, often in the so - called sweat - shopss of the tailoring trade. The clothing of all has been (apparently) bought at Chicago second-hand clothing stores; or, if im- The Dive ported from Italy, has a common and familiar aspect, which anew illustrates the levelling and averaging hand of mod- ern commerce and intercourse, whence it comes that all mankind is growing to look alikeeach individual to be a composite photograph~~ of all the rest. 8 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. Every person, of whatever sex or age, is clothed sufficiently for decency and for warmth; and seems to be provided with all food necessary to sustain life, though perhaps not the rudest health. Emerging on a second-story balcony at the back of one of these Italian houses one comes upon a long vista of house rears and tumble - down back - sheds, squalid beyond conception. Neighbor- ing windows are filled with faces peer- ing out with interest and amusement at the stranger. Here and there are bits of rope stretched from one nail to an- otherfrom house to shed, from fence to banister, from window-sill to door- postcarrying forlorn arrays of washed clothing. Each is the effort of some lowly woman to preserve a little clean- liness in the garments of herself and her household. At least a forlorn hope is keeping up the battle against vileness. On a hot summer night every roof and every balcony in sight is covered with sleeping men, women, and children, each with only a single blanket or cov- erlet for all purposes of protection and decency. All winter the cook-stove of each family supplies warmth to the lit- tle household. (The cheapest coal is al- ways to be had at $3 a ton or less.) The Bad Lands~~ is a quarter more repellent because more pretentious than The Dive, but, being the abode of vice and crime rather than of poverty, it can be properly omitted here. Women of the town are not molested so long as they stay within doors, except on oc- casion of the frequent rows, fights, rob- beries, and murders. The men about are, if possible, more repulsive than the women. Some have showy clothes, more are bums, wrecks of humanity; slouch- ing, dirty, sneaking, hangdog tramps. They do not want work, could not get it if they wanted it, and could not do it if they got it. All they want is a dime a day. With that they can get a great big schooner of beer and a chance at the free-lunch counter. They sleep on the floor till the place closes up, and then crawl into some doorway or hallway, or go to the police station for a bunk. One recognizes Chinatown by the cu- rious signs over the shops. The Chi nese are industrious and economical and peaceablenever molest anybody who lets them alone. Opium they take just as our people take whiskey, and it does not seem to hurt them any more. But when the police find them taking in whites as well as Chinamen, they run them in. It is death, and worse than death, to the others, especially to women. In a typical Chinese shop all is scrupulously neat and clean. It seems as if, by some magic, the smoky, dusty atmosphere of Chicago had been excluded from this unique interior, which looks like the inside of a bric4t- brac cabinet, with bright colors, tinsel and shining metals. On the walls are colored photographs, showing the pro- prietors beautifully dressed in dove- colored garments. In a kind of shrine stands a Joss table or altar, with what is probably a Confucian text hanging over it, and lying on it some opium pipes. In a room behind the shop a fan-tan game is going on upon a straw-matted table, around which gather interested Celestials three deep. In the shop is a freshly opened importation, barrels and boxes of Chinese delicacies, pickled fish of various kinds, with the pungent odor which belongs to that kind of food the world round and the seas over. The men are clothed in heavy, warm cloth, cut in Chinese fash- iongreat, broad cloaks, loose trousers, felt-soled shoes, etc.but in American felt hats. At 406 Clark Street, in the very midst of all that is alien to our better nature, rises the Clark Street Mission. Here are daily gathered, in a free kindergar- ten, some scores of the little unfortu- nates whom a cruel fate has planted in this cesspooL It is a touching sight; they are so innocent as yet, mere buds springing up in the track of a lava- stream. There is a cr& he here as well as kindergarten, and tiny creatures, well fed and cared for, swing in ham- mocks, or sit, stand, walk, or creep all about in charge of kind devoted young women. Curiously enough, many of the little ones are born of Arabian mothers. There are some hundreds of Arabs housed near by. The attendant thinks they are Christian converts, in charge w 10 of church folk who were formerly nus- sionaries in Arabia. The women are occupied in peddling small wares and trinkets, which they carry about in packs and baskets.* In the same hail are evening and Sunday religious meet- ings; and not long ago there was a series of midnight prayer-meetings held here, with how much success I do not know. The whole enterprise is in charge (and at the charge) of the great Womans Christian Temperance Union. This is an institution of wonderful strength and beauty; a giantess, throned in in- telligence and honor; stretching her strong hands toward the weak, sinking thousands of the submerged tenth, and all who are on the edge of the sub- mergence. The W. C. T. U. num- bers 200,000 members in all, of whom 16,000 are in Blinois, and their activity is tireless, their ability wonderful. It is one of the phenomena marking the elevation of the sex under the sunshine of Western freedom and prosperity. The building, planned, erected, and paid for by this body, is just completed, and is the most perfect and (as it should be) the most sightly of all Chicagos new sky-scrapers. It is named Temper- ance Temple; its cost is $1,100,000. Most of its spare room is already en- gaged, and it will earn rentals amount- ing to $200,000 a year. * A year ago I met a party of Arabians on the San Juan River, in Nicaragua, and they too were peddling trinkets carried in packs and baskets. AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. The Pacific Garden Mission has a large hall, opening directly on Yan Bu- ren Street, within five hundred feet of the Grand Pacific Hotel, yet within a scarcely greater distance of some of the worst of the bad districts of the city. The Dive is only half a mile south of it, and The Levee, The Bad Lands, Chinatown, etc., are still nearer. The single big room is vast and dingythe latter characteristic in- separable from every apartment in Chi- cago which is not the object of con- stant, laborious cleaning and renovation. The walls are covered with Scripture texts in large letters, Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God, etc. Welcome, God is love, and other cheering mottoes are em- bossed in Christmas greens over the platform. A little collection of hymns is upon each seat, and notices of the hours of services are suspended in vari- ous places, among the rest some an- nouncing the Salvation Army meetings. No effort at ornament for ornaments sake appears anywhere; nor any out- ward gayety to suggest inward joy and peace. Colonel Clark is the moving and controlling spirit of the Mission, as well as its chief money supporter. The Hull House Cr~cte or Day Nursery. meetings on Sunday are often full to the doors ; a few front seats being filled by the workers and particular friends, and the rest by the chance- comers, gathered from adjacent slums to hear the music and look on at the 10 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. of church folk who were formerly mis- sionaries in Arabia. The women are occupied in peddling small wares and trinkets, which they carry about in packs and baskets.* In the same hall are evening and Sunday religious meet- ings; and not long ago there was a series of midnight prayer-meetings held here, with how much success I do not know. The whole enterprise is in charge (and at the charge) of the great Womans Christian Temperance Union. This is an institution of wonderful strength and beauty; a giantess, throned in in- telligence and honor; stretching her strong hands toward the weak, sinking thousands of the submerged tenth, and all who are on the edge of the sub- mergence. The W. C. T. U. num- bers 200,000 members in all, of whom 16,000 are in minois, and their activity is tireless, their ability wonderfuL It is one of the phenomena marking the elevation of the sex under the sunshine of Western freedom and prosperity. The building, planned, erected, and paid for by this body, is just completed, and is the most perfect and (as it should be) the most sightly of all Chicagos new sky-scrapers. It is named Temper- ance Temple; its cost is $1,100,000. The Pacific Garden Mission has a large hail, opening directly on Van Bu- ren Street, within five hundred feet of the Grand Pacific Hotel, yet within a scarcely greater distance of some of the worst of the bad districts of the city. The Dive is only half a mile south of it, and The Levee, The Bad Lands, Chinatown, etc., are still nearer. The single big room is vast and dingythe latter characteristic in- separable from every apartment in Chi- cago which is not the object of con- stant, laborious cleaning and renovation. The walls are covered with Scripture texts in large letters, Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God, etc. Welcome, God is love, and other cheering mottoes are em- bossed in Christmas greens over the platform. A little collection of hymns is upon each seat, and notices of the hours of services are suspended in vari- ous places, among the rest some an- nouncing the Salvation Army meetings. No effort at ornament for ornaments sake appears anywhere; nor any out- ward gayety to suggest inward joy and peace. Colonel Clark is the moving and controlling spirit of the Mission, as well as its chief money supporter. The w Most of its spare room is already en- meetings on Sunday are often full to gaged, and it will earn rentals amount- the doors; a few front seats being ing to $200,000 a year. filled by the workers and particular friends, and the rest by the chance- * A year ago I met a party of Arabians on the 5an com ers, gathered adjacent Juan River, in Nicaragua, and they too were peddling from slums trinkets carried in packs and baskets. to hear the music and look on at the Hall Hause Criche er Day Nursery. AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 11 devotional exercises. It is one of the simply religious efforts to elevate the debased and reform the bad, by offer- ing to them Christ and him crucified; by the direct interposition of heaven it mnst sneceed, but withont snch miracle it cannot. The news of salvation no longer surprises and charms the world, for the world has ceased to fear the opposite. One is reminded of the plaint made two hundred years ago by the French missionaries sent to the savages of this very region (their skin was red in those days) when they said, in effect: Surely we are in nowise to be compared with the Holy Apostles; yet the world must have changed since they went forth among the heathen who heard them gladly, and, rejoicing to receive the glorious news of salvation, flocked forward, one and all, demand- ing baptism. Here we sail the floods and scale the mountains in pursnit of one poor savage, if haply we may pre Temperance Temple. Bnilt by the Womans Christian Temperance Union. 12 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. vail to save him from the wrath to come, and in most cases his salvation is changed to backsliding as soon as our backs are turned. To the same general effect is the conclusion reached by the religious workers of to-day, who say these beings are in nowise fit subjects for a merely religious minis- try. I once told a young musician (a Scan- dinavian) at the Pacific Garden Mis- sion that I was then in search of the very poor and miserable, the helpless- ly wretched, and asked him where they were to be found. He asked where I had been, and on telling him that I came fresh from The Dive, The Bad Lands, Biler Avenue, Niggertown, Chinatown, etc., he asked if these were not poor enough. I said they were rather vicious, drunken, and de- praved than poor; that I wanted to find the poverty that springs from mis- fortune rather than that from drink. To this he impulsively gave the preg- nant answer: There is none. You might find one or two others in five hundred, but it is drink in the case of all the rest. And so it goes. Such is the evidence of the experts, the philanthropists, the missionaries, and the senses themselves. There are sixty saloons in two blocks of this dreadful Dismal Swamp; each sa- loon pays $500 a year of city license alone; pays its United States Govern- ment license for selling spirits, beer, and tobacco; pays for all its stock in trade, its rent, its wages, and expensesthrives like a Canada thistle on the barren soil of its environment. Five hundred dol- lars for license, $500 for rent, $1,000 for wages and expenses, and $1,500 for stock in trade makes $3,500. The sums paid by these poor must reach $4,000 a year, on the average, to each saloon; and sixty saloons gives $240,000 a year, all in one street, within a distance of two Russian Jews at Shelter House. 9 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 13 squares. Verily the savings of the rich are as nothing compared with the wast- ings of the poor. Beer is the alleviation and perpetuation of poverty. I also asked the young musician about the condition of his fellow-Scan- dinavians, where their poor could best be studied. He replied that there were none. Individual helplessness was cared for by individual charities and the churches. That is what might be expected. The Scandinavian immigra- tion has been, on the whole, the finest addition to the Northwest. They are largely agriculturists, are temperate, industrious, strong, frugal, and hardy. Not seldom do great colonies of them go on cheap excursions back to visit the Fa- therland. They pass through Chicago men, women, and childrenwith bands playing and flags flying; they cross the sea and spend some time at the old home, spreading the news of Western freedom and plenty, and then return with many recruits and with fresh relish for the Greater Scandinavia they are building among us. Those who do re- main in the cities are helpers worth having. The girls make the best house- servantsstrong, intelligent, respectful, and self-respecting; and the men, though not blameless in the matter of drink, yet are not among the willing slaves to it. On the whole, they see the alterna- tive presented to themthe two kinds of happiness already spoken ofand make what seems to us the wisest choice between them. The servants, as cooks and second girls, earn from three to five or six dollars a week besides their board and lodging, and the demand for such as have anything like a fair Another Group at Shelter House. 14 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. knowledge of their business is always ahead of the supply. They dress well, save money, and spend immense sums in helping their friends here and in the Fatherland. In the North Division, near the great gas-works, exists a large colony which of old earned the name of Lit- tle, Hell and which presents features of deep shadow with gleams of growing lighta dark cloud with a silver lining. Many of the men are gas-work laborers, doing hard duty, earning large wages, and drinking deep draughts. They are of three racesIrish, German, and Scan- dinavianthe first-named the most able and the most turbulent. The wages earned since the works were started, if they had been wisely used, would have bought the entire plant; would have vested every dollar of the vast and prof- itable stock in the workers. The latter would now be the capitalists. But that is a mere truism. The wage-earners of the whole country would be the capital- ists if it were not that they have pre- ferred to take their joy drop by drop. The bright lining of the dark cloud hovering about the gas-works is the Unity Church Industrial School and Boys Club near by, and the Saint Jamess Church and Central Church (Swings) Missions, not far away. The former (which I happen to know most about) was started in 1876 by the wom- en of Robert Collyers church, in an effort to do something for the poorest and most neglected children, the diffi- culty being that this class was soon supplanted by a better class, less in need of help people more anxious for what they could get than what they could learn. The others, children of the drunken and vicious, were always hardest to reach and to keep hold of. From this grain of mustard-seed has grown a great tree. The excellent and benevolent Eli Bates bequeathed to the enterprise $20,000, which was used for the construction of a brick building having all the appliances for an indus- trial school, and there the worthy Unity Church people spend time and money to good purpose. There are classes in various branches, and a large and well- kept cr~che. A noticeable feature of this lay mission is the Boys Club, where, for several months every year, meetings have been held on several evenings each week to give the youth of the neigh- borhood rational and wholesome fun with some incidental instruction. The boys range from eight to sixteen years old, and were at the start a hard lot. Yet they always had some traits of good feeling. The young women teachers always found them easier to manage than did the men. And even when dis- cipline had to be maintained by force, the majority was sure to be on the side of law and order. As far as possible, the boys are made to manage their own games and exercises, showing some- times a good deal of ability. They number, on ordinary evenings, about sixty, the picnic aggregate reaching to a hundred and fifty. The older boys are workers during the daytime; the younger, attendants on public and pa- rochial schools. There is but little want among the families. Their houses are small and not crowded together; but the house- holds occupy generally only two or three rooms each. Whether influenced by the various missions near by, by the paving and im- provement of streets, or by other causes, or partly by the one and partly by the others, the place is losing its old char- acter, and even its ugly sobriquet is almost forgotten. In Chicago the fashion and the larger part (though not by any means all) of the wealth of the city are on the South Side , and North Side,~~ where also the deepest poverty and deg- radation are to be found. On the great West Side are the industrious and prosperous workers, with their tens of thousands of labor- bought homes. It may be a new idea to the denizens of older cities that laborers should, cans and do own their dwelling-places, both land and building. Far more than half the homes in Chicago are so owned and occupied. The chief part of real-estate speculation is the buying of suburban acres and subdividing and selling them in lots to thrifty workmen. Purchase for the sake of putting up houses to AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 15 rent as dwellings (except in the case of flats) is now extremely rare. The chief agent in this homestead movement is to be found in the numerous building so- cieties, * wherein the mechanic deposits his savings as they accrue, and then when he wishes to build his home he draws from the society whatever he may have laid up, and borrows from it what he may need in addition, paying a pre- mium in addition to the usual interest. (This premium and interest inure to the benefit of the other depositors.) Mem- bership in a building society, and the hope of a bit of ground all his own, are wonderful incentives to temperance in the man and economy in the wife. And when the lot is selected, how he clings to it! Beer and whiskey are forgotten. Even schooling and some other good and proper cares are apt to be post- vate fireside, and the lamp in the win-. dow, he is in peril of his life. On the West Side are also, especially in winter, the unemployed; some of whom could not find work if they would, some would not if they could, and some, when they can and do work, make the omnipresent saloon their savings-bank; a bank which takes in good money but pays out only false tokens. I recently accompanied one of the Volunteer County Visitorss on her walk in search of the people who should be helped by charity, public or private. We walked through a half - mile of street lined with the crowded habita- tions of the poor. At the farther end of it are visible the moving trains of the Fort Wayne Railway, and above and be- yond these the masts and funnels of poned. A city of such homes is safe shipping. Being just outside the old from anarchy. As for any wielder of burnt district, its houses are of wood, torch and dynamite, as soon as he steps ancient, squalid, dilapidated. There is forth into the light of the humble pri- not more than about one saloon to every * See the article on Building and Loan Associations, street corner, therefore this is far from in SCRIBNERS MAGAZINE for June, 1889. an infested region. It is chiefly oc A Waif at the Mission Dormitory. 16 AMONG THE P00k OF CHICAGO. cupied by Italians, who are not, as yet, the sots and terrors of the social sys- tem, and do not seem likely ever to be- come so. Groups of them are idling about, well enough dressed, but low- browed and ill-favored, looking with apparent surliness on visitors come to spy out the nakedness of the land. Within the houses we find the families crowded into two small rooms each, or thereabouts; and in those two rooms are all the operations of existence to be carried on in each case. Sleeping, eat- ing, cooking, washing, ironing, sickness, child - bearing, nursing, living, dying, and buryingthese considerations force themselves on the mind and suggest dismal pictures as one fancies a life so spent. Yet as to mere room, warmth, shelter, dryness, and convenience, the inhabi- tants are better accommodated than is the campaigning soldier in his tent, having no furniture, clothing for night or day, or other appliances for comfort, except those he can carry with him from camp to camp in addition to his arms and accoutrements. But women and children are not soldiers. Camp miser- ies would kill them ; one who has suf- fered such privation can scarcely feel the proper degree of pity for these crea- tureswarm, dry, fat, clothed, safe, at leisure and at liberty. The poorest and most wretched house- hold we found that day was that of an old soldier, a gray-haired man of education and (at some time) of intelligence, once a lieutenant in a volunteer regiment. He was wounded at the battle of Fair Oaks. There he lies, grimy and ver- min-infested, in a filthy bed, with a young grandchild beside him in like condition, and a drunken virago of a woman, ramping and scolding in the two rooms which constitute the family abode. She is quite the most repulsive being yet met with. A little inquiry develops the fact that this man was in the Soldiers Home at Milwaukee (and could return there to remain, if he wished), well fed, clothed, and cared for, The Bad Lands AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 17 and that he left there because: You the choice before him, and the light see you cant stand it to be kept down shining on the parting of the ways, will all the time, and moved back and forth, takeis takingthe one those devoted and here and there, whether you like it young women are making so inviting to or not. And he moved his black paws his footsteps. back and forth, and here and there, on It is not charity that Hull House of- the dingy bedclothes, to indicate how fers, any more than it is precept. True, the Home deprived him of his freedom there are some cases which arise, out- his liberty to pass his time in the side the business of the House, where living death which his present condi- public or private beneficence is turned tion seems to the onlooker, toward deserving helplessness. But that is not strictly Hull House work. The latter consists in bestowing friend- ship and sympathy, the sisterly heart, hand, and voice, on all who are willing to come within its sweet and pleasant influence. With characteristic wisdom and good feeling the Board of the grand Chicago Public Library (free to all) has placed one of its sub-stations in the reading- room of Hull House; and in that large, handsome, well-lighted apartment ap- plications for books are taken, and the books are delivered and returned, all quite without expense of any kind to the reader. The building which contains the lib- rary and reading-room has been added to the Hull House structures by the liberality of Edward B. Butler. The same building contains a studio in which drawing - classes are held each even- ing, and an admirably fitted art-exhibit room in which some of the best pict- ures in Chicago are shown from time to time. The humanitarian side of the Hull House activity is maintained by the Nursery, the Kindergarten, the Diet Kitchen, the District Nursing, and the Industrial Classes. Its activities are multiform that they may meet the needs, not alone of the enterprising nor yet the poor, but of its neighborhood as a whole. That it has met such a need is shown by the fact that the weekly membership of its club and classes is nine hundred. Chicagos Hull House~~ is already widely known as the Toynbee Hall of the West, though the parallelism be- tween the two i~istitutions is far from absolute and complete. In the first place, Hull House was started and is carried on by women, with only the oc- casional and exceptional helpwelcome though it isof the other sex. Then, too, the system is as different as are the conditions in which the two institu- tions are placed. Its best service in stimulating the intellectual life of the neighborhood has been in the establish- ment of its college - extension classes, which have grown into what is practi- cally an evening college, with thirty courses weekly and a membership of one hundred and fifty to two hundred students of a high order. In a widely different sphere is its strictly philanthropic worth. Yet, even here, Hull House is not a mission, since no especial religion is inculcated and no particular social reform is announced as the object of its being. If people in the humbler classes of its visitors learn there to live good, clean, temperate lives, it is through the demonstration of the enduring beauty and gayety of such a life as contrasted with the lurid and fleeting joys of the other. Hull House parlors, class - rooms, gymnasium, lib- rary, etc., are the rivals of the swarming grog-shops. Nobody, not even the orna- ments of the college-extension classes, is more welcome than the poor fellow who has begun to feel that he can no longer struggle against poverty and drink, and nobody is less pointed at, preached at, or set upon than he. The choice is open to him, right hand or left hand as he sees fit, and it surely seems as if no sane human being could hesi- tate. At least the boy growing up with VOL. XII.2 The Cr~che, or Day-Nursery, is surely as bright, sunny, and pretty a room as any ever devoted to that angelic pur- pose. Two little, low tables, two dozen little, low chairs, each holding a pathetic little figure, dear to some mothers heart, and a young lady as busy (and some- times as puzzled) as a pullet with a 18 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. brood of ducklingsthese are the dra- matis personw. It is luncheon time, and with much pains the babes have been brought to reasonable order, side by side, each restless pair of hands joined in a devotional attitude far from symbolic of the impatient being behind them. One small creature remains re- bellious, and stands against the wall in tearful protest. The guardian angel explains that the small creature misses its mother, whereupon a visitor lifts it in his arms, and all is peace. The Crl~che was only started last year, and has flourished greatly. The num- bers vary from twenty - five to thirty, being governed by a curious law the prevalence of house - cleaning! When many mothers can find jobs of scrub- bing (which, by the way, earns a dollar and a half a day), then many babies are the helpless beneficiaries of the good offices of Hull House. But the benefit is not a gift; Hull House gives out no alms; every child is paid for at five cents a day. The Sewing-Class is, if possible, a still more beautiful sight. Twenty or thirty little girls are gathered about low tables sewing away for dear life, and sitting among them are several young soci- ety women, guiding the immature hands and thoughts. It is proudly said that no social pleasures are allowed to stand in the way of this philanthropic duty. From an admirable pamphlet entitled Hull House: A Social Settlement, I condense the following sketch of labors and efforts: Monday Evenings: Social Club, thirty girls. Debating Club, thirty young men. (The two clubs join later in the evening.) Athletic Class. Drawing Class. Greek Art Class. Mathematics Class. English Composition Class. Tuesday Evening: Working Peoples Social Science Club. (Addresses and discussions led by judges, lawyers, and business men.) Gymnasium. Drawing Class. Cooking Class. American His- tory. Reading Party. Ca~sar. Latin Grammar. Political Economy. Mod- ern History. And so on through the week. The noticeable varieties of interest include (besides the branches already named) Singing, Needlework, Diet Kitchen, Bi- ology, Shakespeare, Lilies and Ferns, Victor Hugo, German Reception, Chem- istry, Electricity, Clay Modelling, Eng- lish for Italians, Womens Gymnastics, etc. This vast curriculum is only for the evenings; the mornings and after- noons and the Sundays have their own programmes; and it may well be imag- ined that no business establishment goes far beyond this beehive of benevo- lence in orderly bustle and activity. Hull House is fairly supplied with means. The use of the property it oc- cupies is freely and generously bestowed upon it by Miss Helen Culver, to whom the property was devised by the late Charles J. Hull, whose old family resi- dence it was. Then, too, the needs of the institution are wonderfully small compared with the ever-widening and deepening sphere of its influence. Miss Jane Addams and Miss Ellen Gates Starr are the young women whose hearts conceived it, whose minds planned it, and whose small hands started it and have managed it thus far. One of the young women had some private means of her own; and such is the sway of their gentle influence among those who know them that when they are told that money must come, lo! it appears. And, what is more, when they are forced to admit that their strength unfortunately not superabundant has reached its limit, other young helpers are at hand and the work never flags. There exist in Chicago other benevo- lent institutions whose very number and variety preclude description. The City Directory contains the addresses of 57 asylums and hospitals, 28 infirmaries and dispensaries, 41 missions, 60 tem- perance societies, lodges, etc., and thirty- seven columns of secret benevolent as- sociations, camps, lodges, circles, etc. The city is honeycombed with philan- thropic associations in all .magnitudes, shapes, and forms, from the ancient and honorable Relief and Aid (which won deathless fame after the Great Fire) down to the latest Working-Girls Luncheon Club, the Ursula, instituted by the graduates of an advanced school to provide and furnish, at cost, mid-day meals in the business districts for their U AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 19 toiling sisters. (There are several such clubs, and more are forming.) Every- one of the hundreds of churches is a centre of charitable effort. It becomes a net-work so all-pervading that one wonders that any should slip through, after all, and perish of want, as occasion- ally happens, nevertheless. What is known as the Poor Jews Quarter (as contradistinguished from the splendid homes of their richer co-re- ligionists) lies near the western end of Twelfth Street Bridge, and to the south- ward of the West Side Italian quarters already spoken of. Certainly it is not the abode of ease, luxury, and elegance; its odors are not those of flowery meads, its architecture is not marked by either massiveness or ornamentation, its streets and alleys are not grassy (though they look as if they might be fertile under proper cultivation), and its denizens are more remarkable for number than for attractiveness. On the other hand, the region is still less suggestive of a Ghetto, according to any prevailing tradition of those abodes. Children, ranging from infancy to ado- lescence, and from invalidism to rude health, throng the sidewalks. Many of these children have never seen a tree or a blade of grass. In our summer country excursions, said a lady of Hull House, we have much pleasure in watching themthey kneel down some- times so as to study the grass and feel it with their hands. Yet the sidewalk seems to furnish a tolerable substitute for the grass-plat, and the passer-by has to edge close to street or fence to keep clear of the flying rope, turned by two girls, while a little string of others are awaiting their turn to jump, each one who trips taking the place of one of the turnersjust as is done by their richer fellow-mortals, better fed and better dressed, but perhaps not more joyous and unregretful. In the midst of this swarming colony __ risestall, large, handsome, and solid the Jewish Training School, under the management of a strong band of the solid Israelites of the city (representing, of course, solid millions of money) and the superintendency of Professor Ga- briel Bamberger. Fifty thousand dol lars a year is wisely and economically expended here, and eight hundred chil- dren and youths, of both sexes, and all races and religions, are taught and cared for. The classes in drawing and clay-modelling are especially notable. Not far away is the Shelter House of the Society in Aid of Russian Refu- gees. There the members of this un- fortunate class find surcease of their woes and persecutions in a blessed har- bor of temporary refuge, whence they are scattered to various employments and chances to earn an honest living, free from imperialism, officialism, priest- craft, and military service. They are a sturdy-looking set, and will not be long in learning that their greatest ill-treat- ment is turned to their greatest good luck when they arrive at the Shelter House, as they are doing at the rate of more than ten a day. They are sub- merged no longer. When the back streets of Chicago are undergoing their spring cleaning, the mass of mud collected for removal in this quarter is incredible. The piles along the street-side are as high as they can be made to stand erect, and as close together as they can be. This is the accumulation of the months of December to March inclusive the months when snow, frost, and short days impede the work so that a dollar laid out does perhaps not forty cents worth of good. Then, too, the cold renders the vile deposit less hurtful to health, and the moisture and the frost keep it from flying about in the form of dust. The main streets are cleaned even when there is snow on the ground.* One characteristic development of business-like philanthropy in Chicago is in the Liberty Bell and Friendship buildings for the accommodation of working-men. They are not germane to the subject of poverty, except to show its absence, prevention, or alleviation. The first-named was an experiment in the direction of furnishing to working-men good accommodations at rates almost * Even in well-swept London the streets are neglected in winter. In one street is the hody of a dead dog, and near by two dead cats, whichile as thongh they had slain each other; all three have been crnshed flat by the traffic which has gone over them, and they, like everything else. are frozen and harmless.Labor and Life of the People, vol. ii., p. 96, London, 1892. 20 AMONG THE POOL? OF CHICAGO. nominaL A man is there offered a bath, a shave, and the use of a laundry (both provided with hot and cold water and soap), and a clean bed in a clean and ventilated room, all for ten cents. The whole main floor is devoted to a waiting- room with chairs and tables. In this room one sees from fifty to one hundred men, old and young, taThing, smoking, reading newspapers, and the place is filled with the hum of conversation. In one corner is a group discussing work and wages; in another the younger fel- lows have made their newspapers into balls which they toss one to another. There is no drinking, no singing, and no boisterous mirth. They take their pleasure sadly, according to their wont, as Froissart remarks concerning their far-away ancestors. From the profits earned by the Lib- erty Bell the Friendship has been built. There things are more hand- somely done. Not only are there no beds in tiers, as at the other place; but each is entirely inclosed in a locked space, eight feet high, and protected by charged electric wires, so that the tenant and all his belongings are safe from in- trusion or theft. The same accommoda- tions (in more elegant form) are offered as in the former place, and the entire charge is fifteen cents. The originator of the pleasant and profitable scheme is now abroad, looking for further knowl- edge wherewith to provide further im- provements. At each place a good meal is served, in a restaurant attached, at an addi- tional charge of ten cents. The savings of the men are accepted and cared for by the concern, and they amount to a very considerable sum. The men are largely dock-workers, sailors waiting for the opening of the lakes, mechanics out of a job, workers at light trades and callings about town, etc. All are com- fortably clothed and quite free from any marks of want. This is a pleasant aspect of the labor situation; but it is to be remembered that here we have only the able-bodied single men, the class which is last to feel the griping hand of poverty. Wom- en and children, the difficult and dis- tressing element in the social problem, are in all this left out of the account. The dock-laborers among these men the largest class earn from twenty to twenty-five cents an hour. On the North Side (275 Indiana Street), is the Home for Self-supporting Wom- en, which, as its name implies, does a service for the other sex somewhat simi- lar to that offered to men at the Friend- ship. For obvious reasons the difficul- ties in dealing with the stronger sex are greatly magnified when the weaker is in question. Yet, great or small, those difficulties are braved, and, to a large extent, conquered. Better entertain- ment must be (and is) provided; larger charges must therefore be imposed, and that on individuals whose wages are smaller. Still the enterprise is nearly self-supporting, and when kindly fate shall inspire some rich and benevolent friend of woman to pay off a $10,000 mortgage on the realty of the Home, then its net income will overtake its outgo, and even in time exceed it, mak- ing its devoted ministers (all women) able to extend its influence in an ever- increasing ratio. Meantime the annual reports are written in an admirable style of good-humored naThet~ which shows that work and worry cannot daunt or sadden those whose hearts are in their business. It is a most worthy and successful effort at the best kind of help; but it still leaves untouched the problem of family helplessnessthe soft, elastic, unbreakable bond which binds the hands and feet of mothers. Near the centre of business are two institutions for the care of homeless newsboys, bootblacks, and other young street workers, the Waifs Mission and Training School and the News- boys Home. The former has a school, a dining-room and kitchen, a dormitory with fifty beds, a bath-room, a gym- nasium, a printing-office, etc., and its plan includes military drill (with a brass band formed among the boys them- selves), instruction in the printing busi- ness, and the finding of places for boys old enough to enter steady employment. Its patrons and managers include judges of court, business men and capitalists, and a board of charitable women. The number of boys accommodated is lim- ited to the number of beds. An institution somewhat analogous to 1 0 DRAWN BY OTTO H. BACHER. In a Sweat-shop. 22 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. this is the Illinois School of Agricult- ure and Manual Training for Boys, placed on three hundred acres of farm- ing land at Glenwood, not far south of the city limits. Until this school was started (1887) there was absolutely no place to which a boy could be sent who was thrown upon the world by any of the lamentable casualties to which every community is subjectorphanage, de- sertion, forced separation from drunken or criminal parents. The courts of cer- tain counties make use of this as a ref- uge for such boys, and allow a certain small monthly stipend for each; but this is necessarily far short of the abso- lute requirements of proper subsistence, clothing, and education, and more money than the school has yet received could be well used in it. The boys are pro- vided with homes, chiefly with farmers, and the average outlay for each, up to the time when he is so provided for, is only about 60. The future life of the boy is kept in view and recorded; al- most always with results that justify the efforts. The Newsboys and Bootblacks Home is the oldest of the institutions of its class. It cares for some fifty or sixty boys, giving them decent sustenance and protection at lowest cost, and also providing for their amusement when circumstances permit. Some philan- thropic persons object to these refuges of the human waifs and strays on the ground that they encourage boys to run away from their families. To this there seem to be two possible answers first, that every lodge, circle, hospital, asylum, and refuge runs to some extent against the family relation, not even excepting the fashionable clubhouses next, that the boys in the missions have perhaps found a better home than they left; that the change for them is a step upward, not downward. As far as one can see, it is a change from the gutter to the mission. The sweat-shop is a place where, sep- arate from the tailor-shop or clothing- warehouse, a sweater (middleman) assembles journeymen tailors and nee(lle-women, to work under his super- vision. He takes a cheap room outside the dear and crowded business centre, and within the neighborhood where the work-people live. Thus is rent saved to the employer, and time and travel to Laundry and Bath at the Liberty Bell. w AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 23 the employed. The men can and do work more hours than was possible un- der the centralized system, and their wives and children can help, especially when, as is often done, the garments are taken home to finish. (Even the very young can pull out basting- threads.) This finishing is what re- mains undone after the machine has done its work, and consists of felling the waist and leg-ends of trousers (paid at one and one-half cent a pair), and, in short, all the felling necessary on every garment of any kind. For this service, at the prices paid, they cannot earn more than from twenty-five to forty cents a day, and the work is largely done by Italian, Polish, and Bohemian women and girls. The entire number of persons em- ployed in these vocations may be stated at 5,000 men (of whom 800 are Jews), and from 20,000 to 23,000 women and children. The wages are reckoned by piece-work, and (outside the finish- ing ) run about as follows: Girls, hand-sewers, earn nothing for the first month, then as unskilled workers they get $1 to $1.50 a week, $3 a week, and (as skilled workers) $6 a week. The first-named class consti- tutes fifty per cent. of all, the second thirty per cent., and the last twenty per cent. In the general work men are only employed to do button-holing and pressing, and their earnings are as fol- lows: Pressers, $8 to $12 a week; underpressers, $4 to $7. Cloak op- erators earn $8 to $12 a week. Four- fifths of the sewing-machines are fur- nished by the sweaters (middlemen) also needles, thread, and wax. The sweat-shop day is ten hours; Liberty Bell. 24 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. but many take work home to g~t in over- time; and occasionally the shops them- selves are kept open for extra work, from which the hardest and ablest workers sometimes make from $14 to $16 a week. On the other hand, the regular work - season for cloakmaking is but seven months, and for other branches nine months, in the year. The average weekly living expenses of a man and wife, with two children, as es- timated by a self-educated workman named Bisno, are as follows: Rent (three or four small rooms) $2; food, fuel, and light, $4; clothing, $2, and beer and spirits, $1. The first matter complained of is the wretchedness of the quarters. The pro- posed remedy for this is the establish- inent by clothiers of outlying workshops which shall be clean, light, and ventilat- edin other words, not sweat-shops. A city ordinance enacts that rooms pro- vided for workmen shall contain space equal to five hundred cubic feet of air for each person employed; but in the average sweat-shop only about a tenth of that quantity is to be found. In one such place there were fifteen men and women in one room, which con- tained also a pile of mattresses on which some of the men sleep at night. The closets were disgraceful. In an adjoin- ing room were piles of clothing, made and unmade, on the same table with the food of the famiiy. Two dirty little children were playing about the floor. The second complaint regards the public good. It is averred, with ap- parent reason, that clothing should not be exposed to contamination and possi- ble infection in rooms not set apart for working-rooms, especially in private houses, where members of the family, young and old, may quite possibly be ill of dangerously contagious fevers and other complaints. The danger of con- tagion from the hands of the workman himself is multiplied in proportion as the tenement is crowded where the gar- ments are taken for work. Another complaint, urged with much feeling, is that when the workers set up a Union shop of their own, where they did the very best work at prices as low as those charged at the sweat- shops, but (by saving the profits of a middleman) were able to give more to the workers, they were deliberately and confessedly frozen out by the with- holding of patronage by the clothing firms, and this after having been in prosperous and peaceable operation for two years. The sweaters could not force down wages as low as they wished, because the workers in the Union shops were doing so well. Therefore they got the employing firms to refuse work to the mens own establishment, and throw it all into the middlemans hands. A firm of employers for whom the association had worked two years were instrumental in this incredible cruelty. It is said by the workmen that they were driven to their action by othersin the business, for when the little co-operative concern applied for work, they were referred to an association of the employing firms, and were there ab- solutely refused. The sweating system has been in operation about twelve years, during which time some firms have failed, while others have increased their production tenfold. Meantime certain sweaters have grown rich; two having built from their gains tenement-houses for rent to the poor workers. The wholesale cloth- ing business of Chicago is about $20,- 000,000 a year. Mr. Bisno, the workman to whom I have alluded, has been led by his reading toward Socialism (very far from Anarch- ism), and he thinks that poverty and drink are parent and childpoverty the parent. A talk with him would be an en- lightenment to any person who had not already adequate knowledge of the mean- ing of the short phrase A good days work. He would get a new idea of the unusual ability, mental and manual, the unflagging speed, the unwearied appli- cation which go to the earning of a days wages of the higher grades. He thinks that he could not maintain such speed without some liquid stimulus, in which other equally good workers think he is mistaken. (At the same time he is ex- tremely moderate.) He says that beer is sold at five cents the measured pint (yielding two-and-a-half glasses), and that it is freely brought into the sweat- shops, wherein, in fact, the workers are entirely independent of personal control, w AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 25 their work alone being subject to inspec- tion and criticism. The inspection is close and constant, and failure entails the doing over of the job. Spoiling (such as tearing while ripping spoiled seams) leads to deductions from pay. The lat- ter is very rare. Division of labor is good; scatter- ing of workers from great groups into smaller groups is good; employment of women in their own homes is good; pre- vention of theft is good, and cheapness of garments is good. Unwholesome at- mosphere, moral and material, is bad; insufficient wages is bad; possibility of infection is bad, and child - labor is (usually) bad. How shall the good be preserved and the bad cured or allevi- ated? At the head-quarters of the West Side police one is in the near neighborhood of the Anarchist Riot of 1886. In that building the police force was mustered and formed for its march out to the an- archist meeting-place, 500 feet distant; and there 67 of the police, killed and wounded, were laid when brought back a few minutes later. The messenger in attendance is one of the severely wound- ed, now too much shattered to do more than light tasks about the station. Con- versation with some of the men at this station has led me to a new appreciation of the magnitude of the issues then and there fought out, and the finality of the settlement arrived at. A lieutenant of police recently said to me: The whole thing is played out. They will never make another experi- ment. There is no interest in anarchy or socialism any more, and no meetings to speak of. They do get together, some of them, at Twelfth Street Turner Hall, but youd never know that they had ever planned a riot or loaded a bomb. No; they have no connection with hardship and poverty. They can always get their beer, and thats the main thing with them. These quiet and unassuming officers of law and order know that they did their duty, and think that their success was a foregone conclusion. They do not know that though other stronger~~ governments could have put down an- archy by force of arms, and hanged or VOL. XII.4 shot the insurgents by martial law, yet this is perhaps the only government on earth which could have met such a movement by the ordinary police power, and then have given the guilty a long, public trial before a jury of their peers, and have relied on a verdict of conviction, a judgment of death, and the deliberate execution of that judgment. Mr. Joseph Greenhut (himself a So- cialist, somewhat out of sympathy with the alleviation of poverty, its absolute cure being, in his view, possible by changes in the constitution of society), furnishes many statistics showing the riding rates of wages earned in some hundreds of trades and callings, from which the following are selected: Per diem. Bricklayers, stone-cutters, and stone-masons $4 00 Plasterers 3 50 to $4 00 Carpenters 2 50 to 2 80 Bridge-builders 2 50 to 3 25 Ship-carpenters and caulkers 2 00 to 3 50 Machinists, blacksmiths, and wagon-makers 2 00 to 2 50 Pattern-makers and horse-sho- ers 275to 350 Engineers 2 00 to 5 00 Grain-trimmers 2 75 to 3 50 Lumber-shovers 3 00 to 6 00 Sewer-builders 2 00 to 3 00 Plumbers, gas-fitters, painters, photographers, printers, etc 2 00 to 3 50 Boot- and shoe-makers, cigar- makers, millers, stereotypers and electrotypers, copper, tin, and sheet-iron workers, brass finishers, upholsterers, etc 1 75 to 3 00 Iron and steel mill-workers, japanners, etc 1 50 to 6 00 Tailors and suit-makers 1 00 to 3 00 Type-founders, furriers, book- binders, furniture-workers, distillers, brewers, etc 1 50 to 3 00 Sailors (with board) 1 50 to 2 00 Farmers 1 50 to 3 00 Coopers, fish-packers, gravel- roofers, freight-house men, laundrymen, makers of iron and lead pipe, wire-goods, vault-lights, etc 1 50 to 2 50 Brick-makers 1 00 to 3 00 Planing-mill hands 1 25 to 2 25 Harness-makers, musical in- strument-makers 1 25 to 3 00 Market-menAce-wagon men,etc 1 50 to 2 75 Packing and slaughter-house men 125to 400 Lumber-yard hands 1 25 to 1 50 Dock laborers 1 00 to 2 00 Confectioners, millinery and straw-goods makers, hair- workers, etc 1 00 to 3 00 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. Per diem. Female clerks $1 00 to $2 75 Glove and mitten-makers.... 60 cents to 3 00 Drug clerks Telegraph and telephone operators Bakers and barbers Stablemen Teamsters Dressmakers Office stenographers and type. writers By the week. $12 00 to $25 00 10 00 to 10 00 to 9 00 to 9 00 to 6 00 to 20 00 14 00 15 00 12 00 15 00 600to 2000 Mr. Greenhut estimates the immi- grant nationalities (including their chil- dren) composing Chicago as follows: Germans, 400,000; Irish, 210,000; Sclavonians, 100,000; Scandinavians, 110,000; English, Scotch, and Welsh, 80,000; French Canadians, 15,000 ; Ital- ians, 15,000; French, 5,000; Colored, 13,000 ; and Chinese, 2,000. all around were made as there were men in the saloon. From a large number of sources it was learned that it is the custom with the Polish labor- ers the violation of which means disgrace for each man on pay-night to treat all his fellows, the bartender and contractor included, and for the two latter, when it comes their turn, to treat the men. It is needless to say that the contractor and bar- tender rarely have to pay for what they set up to the crowd. The possible remedy for this state of thingsif there be any remedyis out- side the province of the present essay. Suffice it to say here, that the non-expert observer, however sympathetic, is prone to feel that any effort at relief of the chosen miseries which does not strike at the cause of the choice, is futile. A late issue of the Chicago Tribune had the following suggestive paragraph: WORK WAITING FOR UNEMPLOYED. No one doubts but that the drink- bill of Chicagoestimated at $1,000,000 a week, of which three-fourths comes from the pockets of the poorwould change into prosperity, practically, all the adversity of the unfortunate classes, just as the drink - bill of Russia $1,000,000 a daywould supplant fam- ine by abundance. Much poverty comes from drink that does not come from drunkenness. A man may spend in drink the total profit on his earnings, the total surplus above necessary outgoes, and it mayusually doesamount to an m- surance fund which, well invested, would form a respectable fortune during his prosperous years. Then, when old age, sickness, or accident befalls, he is penni- less. His poverty springs from drink; no matter if he never was drunk in his life. The man who drinks up what he might save is as short-sighted as the husbandman who should needlessly eat up his seed-wheat. Paying off~~ is often done in saloons, in which the paymaster may or may not be interested. It is a vile and hurtful practice. A late article in a Chicago paper contains the following words on this theme: Contractor Piatkiewicz said some of his work- men habitually spent for liquor half their earnings, and that on one pay-night, several years ago, he recollected that out of a total of $480 due his men, the chips in the basket gave to the saloon-keeper $200. To add to this, he said that as many treats THE STATEMENT ABOUT CHICAGOS ARMY OF IDLE MEN REFUTED. The statement that there are 30,000 to 50,000 laboring men out of employment to-day in Chicago is false, said Oscar Kuehue yesterday. Mr. Kuehue is the General Agent of the German Be- uevolent Society and is in a position to know. I could have furnished, he continued, during the month of March, employment to 300 or 400 more men than I did, if I had had the men to fill the ap- plications that came into my office. Farmers from within a radius of thirty miles of Chicago come to me to supply them with farm-laborers, and when I tell them that 1 havent men for them, and cant get the sort of men they want, they ask in surprise where these 50,000 unemployed in Chicago are. At oue oclock this afternoon there were thirty farm- ers in my office after laborers. They would have employed fifty men, but I had to disappoint them. The truth of the matter is that there is no excuse for the idleness of an energetic young man who is not married. He can get work if he wants it. For a married man there is more excuse. He is not free to move about as the unmarried man is, and is more limited in his choice of occupatious. We find it more difficult to get work for men of families. There is some chosen poverty which is not necessarily connected with drink. Many instances arise in the minds of men and women who are trying to do their philanthropic duty. The pitiable man is he who cannot get work to do, and in so far as this article on poverty in the West does not present the harrowing pictures of want elsewhere, it must be accounted for in the same way as was the shortness of the celebrated chapter on Snakes in Iceland. Work and wages, seed-time and harvest, have not yet failed in the land. And the art of making the wise 26 GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. 27 choice of possible joys, though not yet fully learned, is gaining ground. The overwhelming tendency of modern life is toward the cities. It al- most seems as if they would have to be walled about in order to keep in the country the proportionsfour-fifths at least which must remain there in or- der to provide food for all. Everything done to alleviate the condition of the poor in great cities works in the direc- tion of bringing more into them; and no argument or persuasion, or more solid consideration of betterment, pre- vails to get them out after once im- mersed in the pleasurable excitement of gregarious existence; they would rather starve in a crowd than grow fat in quietudeespecially if the crowd is sprinkled with aromatic charity. Humanity, like other semifluids, moves in the line of least resistance and most propulsion. Idleness drifts toward where commiseration and alms- giving are most generous and unques- tioning; love of drink toward where beer and liquor are most plentiful The free soup-kitchen is a profitable neigh- bor for the saloon. Labor is a blessing in disguise; and a free gift is often a disguised curse. Then is a part of the prevalent phil- anthropic feeling, though coming from the noblest part of our nature, tainted with sentimentality and sensationalism? Is it, to a certain extent, the vagary of good men and women who, consciously or unconsciously, regard physical labor as only a necessary evil? Is it part of the new creed which sees in drink not the cause but the consequence of want and misery? Quien sabe? At any rate, if any statement should be made of the Western aspect of the matter, as it am pears to men who regard duly paid toil as the condition of well-being, which statement did not present this possi- bility as at least an obtruding suspicion, it would be false and defective. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread was not a curse but a bless- ing, and so shall be until a dreary Utopia prevail, competition giving place to com- bination, mankind being beaten up into an omelet, and excelling and excellence no more. By Leroy Milton Yale. HEN spring seems still afar off, when nights are sharp and patch- es of snow lie about, in spite of the frost the maple feels the sweet juices in all its fibres. The same nameless influence touches the angler, his blood moves, he has no more choice than the budding tree. He must see his fly-books. Every article of his outfitcreel, hobnail, or rodhas its charm to rouse memory or quicken imagination; but in the book is hidden the subtlest spell of alL Move but a fly from its folds and up swarm the recollections and the dreamsrec- ollections of a past in which all joy is fresh, all disappointment forgotten, dreams of a future filled much more abundantly. Not dreams alone. To the observant angler running brooks GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS.

GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. 27 choice of possible joys, though not yet fully learned, is gaining ground. The overwhelming tendency of modern life is toward the cities. It al- most seems as if they would have to be walled about in order to keep in the country the proportionsfour-fifths at least which must remain there in or- der to provide food for all. Everything done to alleviate the condition of the poor in great cities works in the direc- tion of bringing more into them; and no argument or persuasion, or more solid consideration of betterment, pre- vails to get them out after once im- mersed in the pleasurable excitement of gregarious existence; they would rather starve in a crowd than grow fat in quietudeespecially if the crowd is sprinkled with aromatic charity. Humanity, like other semifluids, moves in the line of least resistance and most propulsion. Idleness drifts toward where commiseration and alms- giving are most generous and unques- tioning; love of drink toward where beer and liquor are most plentiful The free soup-kitchen is a profitable neigh- bor for the saloon. Labor is a blessing in disguise; and a free gift is often a disguised curse. Then is a part of the prevalent phil- anthropic feeling, though coming from the noblest part of our nature, tainted with sentimentality and sensationalism? Is it, to a certain extent, the vagary of good men and women who, consciously or unconsciously, regard physical labor as only a necessary evil? Is it part of the new creed which sees in drink not the cause but the consequence of want and misery? Quien sabe? At any rate, if any statement should be made of the Western aspect of the matter, as it am pears to men who regard duly paid toil as the condition of well-being, which statement did not present this possi- bility as at least an obtruding suspicion, it would be false and defective. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread was not a curse but a bless- ing, and so shall be until a dreary Utopia prevail, competition giving place to com- bination, mankind being beaten up into an omelet, and excelling and excellence no more. By Leroy Milton Yale. HEN spring seems still afar off, when nights are sharp and patch- es of snow lie about, in spite of the frost the maple feels the sweet juices in all its fibres. The same nameless influence touches the angler, his blood moves, he has no more choice than the budding tree. He must see his fly-books. Every article of his outfitcreel, hobnail, or rodhas its charm to rouse memory or quicken imagination; but in the book is hidden the subtlest spell of alL Move but a fly from its folds and up swarm the recollections and the dreamsrec- ollections of a past in which all joy is fresh, all disappointment forgotten, dreams of a future filled much more abundantly. Not dreams alone. To the observant angler running brooks GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. 28 GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. have indeed been books, and their stones have preached him sermons, the notes whereof lie in the pages of these same fly-books. Said a witty friend: It is extraor- dinary with what contempt your true angler looks upon any method which will really catch fish. The wit pierces near the heart of the matter. Any method which will only catch fish? Yes. The true angler is not he whose pole is but the weapon of his predatory instinct. The love of the art must be above the greed of prey. With the bois- terous fisherman and the picnicker with a fishing-rod we have no concern. But among actual sportsman - like anglers the manifestations of the enjoyment of the recreation are as various as tem- peraments. Each exaggerates some of its pleasures, but he best realizes them whose rod is a divining wand, who has the widest sympathy with the outer world, whether it touch him through his scientific insight, his artistic sensi- bility, or that nameless poetic feeling which longs for the sunshine, the wind, and the rain. We may for a moment envy him who tells of great game taken from some far-off lake, but our hearts go out to him who bids us share his little brook when the Sanguinaria is in bloom. It is curious to observe how surely this note of sympathy with nature was struck four hundred years ago by Dame Juliana Berners, and how it reap- pears as a leading motive in the best of angling books all the way down to our day, whether Walton discourses to his scholar or Norris is fly-fishing alone. Curious, too, is the vein of moralizing which runs through the elder Eng- lish writers on angling, whether from the fashion of the time or from direct imitation of Dame Juliana, their model in so many things else. Although crit- icism denies the authorship of The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle to the Dame, one cannot doubt as he reads it that it is the work of some ecclesiastic, who naturally would give first place to the only field sport per- missible in those days to the cloth. It was almost an inspired foresight which placed the work in such connection that it would be read only by gentyll and noble men and kept out of the hondys of eche ydle persone whyche wolde de- sire it yf it were enpryntyd alone by itself . . . to the entent that the for- sayd ydle persones whyche sholde haue but lytyll mesure in the sayd dysporte of fysshyng sholde not by this meane utterly dystroye it. The words in which the duties of an angler are expressed are as serious as in our day are deemed suitable to a marriage service or the installation of a pastor. Would that they all, from I charge and requyre you in the name of alle noble men, to the closing benediction, And all those that done after this rule shall haue the blessynge of god and saynt Petyr, whyche he theym graunte that wyth his precyous blood vs boughte, were burnt with the plumers wire into the memory of every greedy and ill-man- nered angler. An evidence of the solace thai is found in angling is the fact that out of the troublous times of King and Parlia- ment have come down to us at least three works on the art. Walton, who mourned his monarch slain, Venables, whose disastrous West India campaign brought him to disgrace and the Tower, and the Cromwellian trooper, Richard Franck, wandering abroad, all consoled themselves with the rod and writing of its joys. Perhaps the chastening of sorrow joined with the gentle art to sweeten that charming letter which the Royalist Walton prefixed to the book of the Roundhead Venables. Charming books both have written, and one wishes that the same could be said of Franck, for he was a better naturalist and all- round fisherman than either of them. But whatever may have been in his con- troversial heart, there is little of sweet- ness and light in his style. Now to the fly-books. There is no reason why the fly-fisher should con- temn his brother of the bait-rod. Often quite the reverse, if real angling skill be laid in the balance. The anglers circle is quite wide enough for everyone who fishes in the true spirit, whether he casts his fly over the costliest of salmon pools or anchors his punt across the head of a gudgeon swim. But there is room also for a proper regret that he who uses bait alone has never had opened GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. to him all the delights of his pastime. Many places cannot be really fished with a fly. It is a legitimate matter of choice to decline to fish such places, but let the refusal be really from love of sport and not from priggish affectation. There is good ground for Franciss hint that the degree of Master in Angling should be given only to a proficient in all its branches. The advantages of the fly are ob- vious enough. It is always ready, bait must be procured for each occasion. I wish, said a lady one day, that you would teach my husband to use the fly, for I observe that when you desire to go a-fishing, you go, but he raises the whole village for four days to collect his baits. Besides, it is a gratification to avoid giving pain, even if slight, to living bait. A still greater practical advantage is that the fly does not mor- tally wound any fish, and such as (by reason of size or for any other cause) are not wanted for the basket, may be re- turned to the water unharmed. Un- harmed? Probably entirely so. In bait- fishing many an undesired fish is bas- keted because wounds of its gills or gullet make its survival improbable if it were returned to the water. But a fly is not swallowed unless a bait has been added to it. It goes no farther than the mouth, andby trout at least is instantly recognized as a decep- tion, and if it has not been fastened at the moment of seizure, is immediately rejected. That the presence of a hook in the mouth of predatory fish causes little, if any, pain becomes more prob- able the more their behavior is watched. Their mouths being their only prehen- sile apparatus, we should expect these parts to be but slightly sensitive to pain, and such seems from observation to be really the case. Such fish often seize and swallow others so protected with spines that the angler handles them with great caution. Most anglers of experience have seen a fish take a fly repeatedly, or take a second while still 9 struggling to be free of the first, so that it was perhaps landed by two an- glers at once. I have knowledge of a bluefish taking off three large hooks baited for striped bass and coming to gaff on a fourth, when all four were re covered from its mouth. For experi- ments sake, the writer once caught, un- hooked and returned to the water the same trout four times within a few minutes (it being plainly visible all the time), and finally drove it out of the pool with a stick lest it should swallow the bait and be destroyed if it were al- lowed another opportunity. It may be said that in these two instances hunger overcame the fear of pain. But what shall be said of another experience of the writer, when, after playing a grilse for some minutes and losing him, anoth- er cast brought to the fly a fish which proved to be the same one. The fly was fast in his lower jaw, while in his upper jaw a fresh and bleeding tear half an inch in length showed whence it had just broken away. To the negative advantage of pain avoided we may add the positive one that fly-fishing is for many reasons the most interesting form of angling. Fish take the artificial fly best when feed- ing upon the natural insects, which diet (as has been shown experimentally for trout at least) gives weight and strength more rapidly than any other. They are then more inclined to sport, they fight harder, and, it may be added, are more valued for the table. The grat- ification is enhanced by the greater del- icacy of tackle made possible by the flexibility and elasticity of the rod ne- cessary to fly-casting, and it is certain- ly a greater pleasure to outwit the game by a clever imitation of a fly than by an actual gross lump of food. But the es- sential charm, we think, lies beyond the mere use of a fly, for trolling a fly is scarcely less lethargic than any other trolling, while minnow-casting is nearly as delightful as fly-casting. The gentle but continuous activity of fly- fishing gives it interest; the endeavor to put the fly accurately and delicately just where the angler would have it makes it as absorbing as any trial of marksmanship. The fascinating sus- pense of waiting for the rising fish. (There is one under the azalea bush!) Out goes the fly toward the marked spot. (A yard more, and gently, or it is hung up.) The breathless seconds as it sweeps down over it, the restraint of the space of a hearts beat before the * 29 30 GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. turn of the wrist, and then the struggle. These are the charms of fly-fishing the bait-fisher cannot share. There must always be differences of taste as to what kind of fly-fishing is the highest branch of the art. In Eng- land and America trout-fishing has gen- erally been put into the first place. Certainly nowhere can the skilful an- gler more fully bring into play all his resources. The game is small com- pared to a salmon, for instance; but the trout of much - fished waters be- comes possessed of a knowledge, a cun- ning and a wariness which are worthy of all respect, and the overcoming of which adds a mental exercise to the many other charms of this variety of angling. On asking an experienced friend which he thought the more en- joyable, salmon- or trout-fishing, I got the answer, They cannot be com- pared. Trout-fishing is like a sym- phonyall is harmony. One can en- joy the sky, the air, the trees, the water, the tackle and the fish; but when one is fast to a salmon, it is circus all the time. This answer touches the essen- tial difference; the gentle exercise typ- ical of angling is replaced by a more laborious occupation and the calm en- joyment by a struggle. To me, at least, no such struggle has left such charming memories as have some hours of trout-fishing (what pictures they are !), when the capture was of so little moment that only the choicest fish went into the creel. The expression, Salm- on-fishing spoils one for everything else, has often a truth beyond the speakers intent Any fishing which makes the capture of the fish, or of any particular fish, important, is so far spoiled as a recreation. Besides, the planning and the commercial de- tails essential to securing salmon-fish- ing go far to remove it from the do- main of sport to that of business. Here, side by side, lie the book of salmon flies and a box of tiny duns and spinners for dry-fly fishing. In them- selves they embody the contention of theories: up-stream or down-stream fishing, close imitation or colorology, sunk-fly or dry-fly. Warm discussion, earnest disputes, hot words almost (strange accompaniments of the gentle art ), have been stirred up by them, and all needlessly. The dissension is more about names than facts. Under the one title of fly-fishing have been confused fly-fishing proper and what, for the sake of a name, I have called feather-baiting. In both the lure is similar as to materials and structure, but the latter method in its principles and practice resembles fly - fishing proper no more than it does minnow - casting. In fact, the fly-minnow, or Alexan- dra, would serve very well as a type of this style of fishing. Between the two styles are many intermediate shades, but typical examples only are taken for illustration. By fly - fishing proper I mean the method of the purist as practised, let us say, upon a Hampshire chalk-stream, with water clear and fine. As nearly as painstaking search for materials and exactness in tying can avail, his flies are reproductions in size, shape, and color of the actual insects usually found upon the stream to be fished. They are indeed marvels of delicate imitation. Upon the finest of casting lines he places usually but one fly, in order that it may float down stream in the most natural manner possible. Nor will he indulge in any aimless casting, any chuck-and-chance-it work, as he would style it. Patiently he awaits the rising of a, feeding fish, marks its place as accurately as he can, gets well below and casts his fly, still dry, as lightly as he is able, above the point marked and allows it to float without tug or strain jauntily down stream until it passes over the fish. If it is not taken it is dried by a few casts in the air and again put over the fish. If it is taken, there can be little doubt, not only from theory but from comparative experi- ments, that it is taken for the natural fly of which it is the avowed counter- feit. This is, I think, fly-fishing in the strict sense of the term. In such streams, with fish made wary by long experience, to use coarse flies, to cast carelessly, or even to fish down stream, would probably put every neighboring fish off its feed or drive it to the shelter of its hold. In our wilder waters such nicety is not yet necessary, and may even be less successful than less exact- GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. 31 ing methods. But where it is applic able, the writer can testify that it adds to the other pleasures of fly-fishing the charm that always attends delicacy of manipulation and certainty of aim. Note the differences between this kind of fly - fishing and the feather- baiting. Take a salmon - fly, for in- stance. It is a combination in a con- ventional shape, of colors the result of experience or experiment which resembles nothing which the maker ever saw in nature, and if, as some maintain, it is taken by the salmon, because it has seen something like it, that something was certainly not a nat- ural fly. The salmon-fly is usually cast as accurately and delicately as may be, of courseacross the current, and swings in a curve down to the fish, half or wholly submerged. Coming in such a manner it may possibly be taken for a larva, hardly for a fly, whatever be its color. What is true of the salmon- fly is at least equally true of all large flies which are intended to be worked sink and draw. While this method cannot in strictness be considered fly- fishing, there can be no doubt of its success. Trout are often so wild as to have no suspicion of guile, when they will seize any object which attracts their attention. If the water is big, turbulent, or turbid, only a large and showy lure will be visible. There were some pools in the Nipigon in its less frequented days, where the best suc- cess attended, not salmon-flies even, but bass-flies of extraordinary gaudiness and of a size to merit Fosters name of the American half-ounce. What they took the fly for, if for anything in particular, may be a matter of doubt; probably simply as a prey which might furnish food. More recently an ac- quaintance has told me that in a sea- son of low water, when disappointment had been universal, he had good success in this river with the use of midge-flies and light casts. This question, why the fly of th~ V salmon-fly type is taken, has been much discussed in connection with salmon- fishing. Formerly the belief, that salm- on never fed while in fresh water, complicated the inquiry. The con- trary being now well established, it is altogether probable that the fly is seized for examination as possible food. There is a curious difference between the ordinary behavior of a trout and a salmon. As a rule, a trout which takes a small fly apparently in mis- take for a living insect, rejects it al- most instantly if it can. The salmon, on the contrary, usually starts for his hold with the fly in his mouth to ex- amine it there, possibly because of a habit acquired while feeding upon crustacea in the sea. Whether a fresh-run fish takes a fly, or any given fly, on account of its resemblance in the water to some kind of food known at sea, is one of the open questions. But after the fish have been some time in fished water they become usually much more wary. It is interesting to watch their behavior, which seems sometimes to be the result of simple curiosity, or possibly of a halting be- tween hunger and a timidity born of experience. For instance, casting over a pool in which the fish were easily seen, I have had a pair lying near each other rise cautiously to inspect each new fly; rarely would they come twice to the same one. The keen-eyed gaffer in his wrath, as they circled around each and retired, exclaimed, Confound them! They dont mean to take it; they start from the bottom with their mouths shut. After a fish has run the gauntlet of a score or two of pools it becomes very knowing and few flies will move it. I recall a suc- cess with a fly tied with the avowed purpose of presenting an outr6 coin- bination which would certainly be un- familiar. It is hard, as has been said, to be sure whether in such cases it be curiosity or chastened greed that excites the fish. In some cases it must certainly be the latter. For in- stance, for a week the many and tanta- lizingly visible occupants of the Hos- pital poolill-omened nameresisted all the blandishments of my friend and myself, when one evening unexpectedly they began rising very cautiously, fol- lowing the fly as it went down stream, and only touching it as it was being drawn up for the back cast, as if the evi- dence of its departure excited them irre- sistibly to embrace a last chance. But 32 GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. whatever this motive be, it probably ac- gathered by the suifrages of universal counts for multitudes of instances in experience, and to it from year to year which somebodys fancy, tied on the others are elevated. But the steady spot, brings up fish after all the stand- way in which these standard patterns ard favorites have proved worthless. displace the special ones from their own This success of the aforesaid fancies is strongholds forces one to believe that too often for this occasion only. the latter had usually little else than But there again are instances which tradition and local pride in their favor. lead to the belief that the fish some- Exceptionally, some peculiarity of light times rises through anger, aversion, or and water will give a real advantage to a desire to attack and drive away the fly. a local favorite, and when this advantage Here it is possible that a resemblance is associated with some singularity of is seen to something which has else- color or structure, it is quite possible where been an annoyance. Sometimes that the fly may resemble something the reason of the anger is evident, as known as food or as an enemy to the when a heavy male salmon makes open- salmon. But if one takes a dozen or jawed rushes at the casting-line which twenty approved standard patterns he holds his mate captive. But ordinarily cannot fail to notice that every one has the reason of the attraction or annoy- some peculiarityas brilliancy, striking ance excited by a fly must be merely a color, or strong contrastthat makes matter of conjecture. A friend of the it an object likely to attract attention writer, a very skilful and observant an- in the water. gler, relates the following instance: On The pleasures of fly-fishing are not one of those depressing days in which confined to those who have access to salmon are very abundant, plainly visi- trout brooks and salmon rivers. The ble and absolutely indifferent to the widespread black bass readily takes the anglers solicitation, he laid down his fly, and many humbler fish, such as rod and for experiments sake dragged chub and sunfish, give good sport if the or floated over the head of an accessible tackle be suitably light. Indeed, almost fish various salmon-flies fastened to a any fish that feeds near the surface will cord. One fly after another passed ap- take the moving sunken fly, whether in parently unnoticed, certainly unheeded, fresh or salt water. The resources of until the Jock Scott was used. Then the fisherman are much increased in the fish seemed to be uneasy. The ex- the South by the use of the fly in shal- periment was repeated several times, low bays, harbors, and lagoons. Game and as often as this fly came over him fish of large size and excellent quality his ordinary indifference gave place to are thus taken in abundance. In the disturbance; he would move himself, North the pollack, the various herrings, often turning his head away or moving shad, and white perch are among the sidewise, until the fly had passed. most interesting of the fish to be so ta- Whether this dislike was due to a re- ken. Young bluefish in tideways give semblance of the fly to something else, excellent sport, but their teeth are so or to a recollection of an unpleasant destructive that a material stouter than struggle with si~ich a fly, can only be featherssuch as bright-colored flan- guessed. The sporting of salmon with nelis needed to form the lure, if it is leaves which float down stream, and with to last. the appearance of which they must be The fly - books are still full of un- quite familiar, seems to be due to pure touched heads of discourse, yet let frolic, like the circling walk-arounds us close them with but this remark: of leaping trout sometimes seen in an that he who ties his own flies and makes eddy. his own rods and tackle will have a About sjecial flies this article has keener personal interest in his pastime nothing to say. Out of the enormous and give it an additional pleasure which list of special patterns of salmon-flies he may enjoy in the long winter even- pertaining to various rivers, a certain ings when the weary man craves a light peerage of general flies has been amusement. By Thomas Bailey Aldrich. A STORY RE~TOLD.* ABOVE an ancient book, with a knights crest In tarnished gold on either cover stamped, She leaned, and reada chronicle it was In which the sound of hautboys stirred the pulse, And masques and gilded pageants fed the eye. Though here and there the vellum page was stained Sanguine with battle, chiefly it was love The stylus heldsome wan-cheeked scribe, perchance, That in a mouldy tower by candle-light Forgot his hunger in his madrigals. Outside was winter; in its winding-sheet The frozen Year lay. Silent was the room, Save when the wind against the casement pressed Or a page rustled, turned impatiently, Or when along the still damp apple-wood A little flame ran that chirped like a bird Some wrens ghost haunting the familiar bough. With parted lips, in which less color lived Than paints the pale tea-rose, she leaned and read. From time to time her fingers unawares Closed on the palm; and oft upon her cheek The pallor died, and left such transient glow As might from some rich chapel window fall On a girls cheek at prayer. So moved her soul, From this dull age unshackled and divorced, In far moon-haunted gardens of romance. But once the wind that swept the palsied oaks, As if new-pierced with sorrow, came and moaned Close by the casement; then she raised her eyes. See ScRIENERS MAGAZINE for January, 1888. WHITE EDITH.

By Thomas Bailey Aldrich. A STORY RE~TOLD.* ABOVE an ancient book, with a knights crest In tarnished gold on either cover stamped, She leaned, and reada chronicle it was In which the sound of hautboys stirred the pulse, And masques and gilded pageants fed the eye. Though here and there the vellum page was stained Sanguine with battle, chiefly it was love The stylus heldsome wan-cheeked scribe, perchance, That in a mouldy tower by candle-light Forgot his hunger in his madrigals. Outside was winter; in its winding-sheet The frozen Year lay. Silent was the room, Save when the wind against the casement pressed Or a page rustled, turned impatiently, Or when along the still damp apple-wood A little flame ran that chirped like a bird Some wrens ghost haunting the familiar bough. With parted lips, in which less color lived Than paints the pale tea-rose, she leaned and read. From time to time her fingers unawares Closed on the palm; and oft upon her cheek The pallor died, and left such transient glow As might from some rich chapel window fall On a girls cheek at prayer. So moved her soul, From this dull age unshackled and divorced, In far moon-haunted gardens of romance. But once the wind that swept the palsied oaks, As if new-pierced with sorrow, came and moaned Close by the casement; then she raised her eyes. See ScRIENERS MAGAZINE for January, 1888. WHITE EDITH. 34 WHITE EDITH. The light of dreams still fringed them while she spoke: I pray you tell me, does this book say true? Is it so fine a thing to be a queen? As if a spell of incantation dwelt In those soft syllables, before me stood, Colored like life, the phantasm of a maid Who in the childhood of this wrinkled world Was crowned by error, or through dark intent Made queen, and for the durance of one day The royal diadem and ermine wore. In strange sort worefor this queen fed the starved, The naked clothed, threw open dungeon doors; Could to no story list of suffering But the full tear was lovely on her lash; Taught Grief to smile, and black Despair to hope; Upon her stainless bosom pillowed Sin Repentant at her feetlike Him of old; Made even the kerns and wild-men of the fells, Drawn thither sniffing pillage in the air, Gentler than doves by some unknown white art, And saying to herself, So, I am Queen! With lip all tremulous, reached out her hand To the crowds kiss. What joy to ease the hurt Of bruis~d hearts! As in a trance she walked That live-long day. Then night came, and the stars, And blissful sleep. But ere the birds were called By bluebell chimes (unheard of mortal ear) To matins in their branch-hung priories Ere yet the dawn its gleaming edge lay bare Like to the burnished axes subtle edge, She, from her sleeps caresses roughly torn, The meek eyes blinking in the torches glare, Upon a scaffold for her glory paid The roses on her cheek. For it befell That from the Northland there was come a prince, With a great clash of shields and trailing spears Through the black portals of the breathless night, To claim the sceptre. He no less would take Than those same roses for his usury. What less, in faith! The throne was rightly his Of that sea-girdled isle: so to the block Forthwith the ringlets and the slender throat. A touch of steel, a sudden darkness, then Blue Heaven and all the hymning angel-choir! W No tears for herkeep tears for those who live To mate with sin and shame, and have remorse At last to light them to unhallowed earth. Hers no such low-hung fortunes. Once to stand WHITE EDITH. 35 At her souls height in that celestial air, With no hoarse raven croaking in ones ear The coming doom, and then to have lifes rose Struck swiftly from the cheek, and thus escape Loves death, black treason, friends ingratitude, The pang of separation, chili of age, The grief that in an empty cradle lies, And all the unspoke sorrow women know That were, in truth, to have a happy reign! Has thine been happier, Sovereign of the Sea, In that long-mateless pilgrimage to death? Or thine, whose beauty like a star illumed Awhile the dark and angry sky of France, Thy kingdom shrunken to two exiled graves? Sweet old-world maid, a gentler fate was yours! Would he had wed your story to his verse Who from the misty land of legend brought Helen of Troy to gladden English eyes. Theres many a queen that lived her grandeur out, Gray-haired and broken, might have envied you, Your Majesty, that reigned a single day! All this, between two heart-beats, as it were, Flashed through my mind, so lightning-like is thought. With lifted eyes expectant, there she sat Whose words had sent my fancy over-seas, Her lip still trembling with its own soft speech, As for a moment trembles the curved spray Whence some winged melody has taken flight. How every circumstance of time and place Upon the glass of memory lives again ! The bleak New England road; the level boughs Like bars of iron across the setting sun; The gray ribbed clouds piled up against the West; The windows splashed with frost; the fire-lit room, And in the antique chair that slight girl-shape, The auburn braid about the saintly brows Making a nimbus, and she white as snow! Dear Heart, I said, the humblest place is best For gentle soulsthe thrones foot, not the throne. The storms that smite the dizzy solitudes Where monarchs sitmost lonely folk are they ! Oft leave the vale unscathed; there dwells content, If so content have habitation here. Never have I in annals read or rhyme Of queen save one that found not at the end The cup too bitter; never queen save one, 36 WHITE EDITH. And sheher empire lasted but a day! Yet that brief breath of time did she so fill With mercy, love, and holiest charity, As more rich made it than long drawn-out years Of such weed-life as drinks the lavish sun And rots unflowerd. Straight tell me of that queen! Cried Edith: Brunhild, in my legend here, Is lovelywas that other still more fair? And had she not a Siegfried at the court To steal her talisman ?that Siegfried did. Yet Kriemhild wed him. Was your queen not loved? Tell me it all I,, With chin upon her palm She listened, ever in her ardent eyes The sapphire deepening as I told the tale Of that girl-empress in the dawn of Time A flower that on the vermeil brink of May Died, with its folded whiteness for a shroud; A strain of music that, ere it was mixed With baser voices, floated up to heaven! Without was silence, for the wind was spent That all the day had pleaded at the door. Against the rosy sunset the gaunt oaks Stood black and motionless; among the boughs The sad wind slumbered. Silent was the room, Save when from out the crumbling apple branch Came the wrens twitter, faint, and fainter now, Like a birds note far heard in woodlands dim. No word was spoken. Presently a hand Stole into mine, and rested there, inert, Like some new-gathered snowy hyacinth, So white and cold and delicate it was. I know not what dark shadow crossed my heart, What vague presentiment, but as I stooped To lift the fragile fingers to my lip, I saw it through a mist of strangest tears The thin white hand invisible Death had touched! w THE ART OF RAVENNA. By E. H. and E. W. Blashfield. THE traveller who to-day goes from Rome to Florence by rail, through the noble mountains of Tuscany and Um- bria, bridges in a seven-hours journey a gap of ten centuries in the history of art. He leaves behind him the temples and arches, the Yaticans marble popu- lation of half-nude gods and heroes; he comes to medi~eval towers, to saints and virgins, and the frescoed folk of the four- teenth century swathed in their heavy VOL. XII.5 garments. The abrupt transition be- wilders him, the sudden change in his artistic surroundings is almost inexplic- able. How did it come to pass? The gods and athletes did not all die at once, nor the saints spring fully armed with attribute and symbol from the brain of Giotto ; surely there was some inter- mediate period of anticipation and rec- ollection when these incongruous ele- ments were slowly fused together, and

THE ART OF RAVENNA. By E. H. and E. W. Blashfield. THE traveller who to-day goes from Rome to Florence by rail, through the noble mountains of Tuscany and Um- bria, bridges in a seven-hours journey a gap of ten centuries in the history of art. He leaves behind him the temples and arches, the Yaticans marble popu- lation of half-nude gods and heroes; he comes to medi~eval towers, to saints and virgins, and the frescoed folk of the four- teenth century swathed in their heavy VOL. XII.5 garments. The abrupt transition be- wilders him, the sudden change in his artistic surroundings is almost inexplic- able. How did it come to pass? The gods and athletes did not all die at once, nor the saints spring fully armed with attribute and symbol from the brain of Giotto ; surely there was some inter- mediate period of anticipation and rec- ollection when these incongruous ele- ments were slowly fused together, and 38 THE APT OF RAVENNA. the Arts, who illus- trates for all time the name of her asylum. In those days iRavenna was still a port; but the sea, which made her greatness, has by receding de- stroyed her politi- cal importance, thus leaving her to hold the more surely, in her slow decay, the build- ings of a time which she alone among cities fully representsa time when pictorial Christian art had just emerged from her prenatal con- dition of the cata- combs into the light of imperial favor, and the ar- chitecture of the Roman was begin- ning to be that of the Christian. Thus iRavenna be- came the splendid reliquary which preserved the dry bones of antique art, to be quick- ened by the breath of the Renaissance. A unique link in the chain, she is the anomaly of Italian towns a when some dim projection of the mcdi- city of antitheses; of pure water in the ~eval saint stood side by side with a fast- midst of poisonous marshes, of impreg- fading memory of the antique demi-god. nable refuge among treacherous mo- To find the vanished centuries that rasses. wrought this transformation, one must Saved and lifted to high fortune by ride northeast for seven hours more to her submerged territory, when all Italy the Adriatic marshes. elsewhere sunk under the waves of bar- Fourteen hundred years ago, when It- barian invasion; guarded, not besieged, aly flamed behind the horsemen of Al- by the pestilence which walked without aric, the Emperor Honorius fled to the her walls, she is antithetical even in su- strongest city in the land, Ravenna; perficial appearance, and until our own and with his corrupt and motley court times. Without are mean streets and went one noble fugitive, the genius of rough fa~ades; within, color and splen A Ravennese Gentleman. (Interior of San Apollinare Nuovo.) THE ART OF RAVENNA~ 39 dor; advanced radicalism to-day has usurped the stronghold of Greek hier archy; upon her friezes are The gaunt and wasted faces of the Byzantine wom- en, and in her thoroughfares are the most beautiful of Italian girls. Ravenna is the end of the old, the be- ginning of the new. Toward Rome all ancient history tends, from Rome all modern history springs; but here for a brief moment the broad current of his- tory was dammed up into this little space, then ebbing away, even as the Adriatic has done, it left Ravenna full of strange, stranded monuments of a time that has elsewhere been swept out upon the tide into the ocean of oblivion. Among the graves of the buried past, the sarcoph The Tribune of the Princesses in St. Vitalius. 40 THE ART OF RAVENNA. agi of exarchs, captains, and priests, which lie scattered in the churches and the streetswaifs from the shipwreck of Italy when Alaric burst upon her are the sepulchres and effigies of three rulers who epitomize the art - history of the city: of Galla Placidia, the con- quered Roman princess, who subjugated in her turn and married her captor, and preserved to iRavenna what remained of old-time splendor; of Theodoric the Os