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XXXIII
THROUGH HELL GATE STEERAGE
Here, then, is the final travel letter I shall write on this world-girdling tour.
It is a woeful ending for the "sparkling gems" of travel stuff which have gone before.
It will record the sad contrast between my start from my native land, gaily sailing out of the Golden Gate, a de luxe first-class passenger, and winding up my joy-ride around the world by coming through Hell Gate steerage, barely escaping being condemned as a criminal and executed on the high seas, chucked overboard and fed to the sharks.
The lights and shadows of this wicked world are something fierce.
I am glad I made good my promise to try to write a little poetry before I came to this letter. I would surely never try to put it over in this one – it would be too great a strain.
Coming through Hell Gate steerage —
The next line might have to end with "peerage," and steerage and peerage don't mix worth a cent.
My first errand upon arrival in London was to lay in a stock of dress shirts.
But I didn't need any dress shirts coming across the Atlantic.
Indeed I didn't. What I needed was a good stout hickory shirt – a pair of overalls and double-bitted axe.
I don't suppose a writer of travel stuff on a debonair trip around the world ever had so much trouble as I have had the last eight days.
As I have already explained in letter XXVII, I held an order for a first-class passage on any American or British ship I might choose from England to New York.
With two dozen dress shirts, latest approved "Lunnon" style, safely cinched – I didn't propose to take any chances the balance of my trip, so I bought two dozen – I went to get that order changed for passage home.
"Why," the man told me, "we can't book you first cabin on anything sailing for America for six weeks. We can send you to New York steerage, on a ship sailing the day after tomorrow, if you speak quick. There are a couple of vacancies left. But you need not be afraid of steerage at this time. Owing to the war, the flower of America are going home steerage. The truly refined, the got-rich-quick, high-brows of the deepest dye, prize-fighters, captains of industry, and card-sharps are all traveling steerage these days.
"Why, Mr. Allen," he said, "traveling steerage is a picnic now. Owing to the class of people who are patronizing it, everything is done by the ship's management to make the steerage journey home a pleasurable experience."
As I have never been able to get enough picnics – I am a fiend for picnics – I spoke quick. I said: "Book me now."
"And," the man told me, "there will be a rebate coming to you. The fare, steerage, is only seven pounds. You hold a twenty pound order."
"Sure," I said, "thirteen pounds coming my way."
"Oh, no, not thirteen pounds; but there will be something. Come around this evening and I will tell you how much of a rebate you will be allowed."
"Why not thirteen pounds?" I asked. "Over on our side the difference between seven and twenty is thirteen."
"Oh, yes," he said, "but the P. & O. won't stand for such an adjustment; but I'll do the best I can for you."
When I went to get my rebate I was offered one pound eleven shillings.
I told them to keep it; that nothing but a rebate of thirteen pounds looked good to me. "Furthermore," I said, "if the line slips a cog this trip across and forgets to make steerage passage home one continual round of pleasure, if, perchance, I should feel like shaking steerage before we get across, I'll try to work the purser to let me eat first and sleep in the steerage. Coming home from Naples in the rush season, holding a first cabin ticket, I once had to accept second cabin berth, but was allowed to eat in first cabin."
I was willing to shake steerage at Liverpool before ever boarding the ship. A madder lot of Americans I never met, of whom there were about seven hundred, mixed in with about three hundred immigrants. Hours were consumed to get that thousand steerage passengers aboard the tender. No effort was made to separate them. The great majority being Americans with passports to be examined, immigrants and Americans were all held standing for hours in a hot, broiling sun, a congested herd of humanity, while the tedious task of examining the passports was carried on at the gang-plank – a task that could have been done in comfort in a large and commodious room on the wharf, where there were the accommodations for at least our women and children to be seated while immigrants and Americans were separated; after which both bodies could have passed on board in comfort and with dispatch.
But when we reached the ship, wow! a howl went up. We had consumed the biggest part of the day in getting from the wharf to the ship via tender, and we struck it at supper-time. Seven hundred Americans who had been told that steerage home would be a picnic!
Gur-r-r – "picnic!"
Filth! Stench! Vermin! Our illusion was dispelled.
Now there is a streak of yellow in almost everyone. Once in a while a noble, self-sacrificing character is born who had rather suffer with his kind than be delivered, like Daniel, and Joseph, and Moses, and who, by persistently sticking to exalted ideals, win out, so that all ages ring with extolling their characters.
But most of that kind die young.
There are moments when I feel that I'd like to be grand, and good, and noble, like Daniel, and Joseph, and Moses. Then the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil get in between and I slip back. Every time after slipping back from those noble aspirations and high aims a particular and special brand of hard luck strikes me. My heart beat in sympathy with that crowd of seven hundred Americans traveling steerage with whom I had cast my lot; but after the first meal I decided that I'd try to shake them. So I went up first to ask the purser to let me at least eat first cabin.
"Purser," I said, "I am booked to travel home steerage – " – that haughty individual interrupted me with: "You're a third-class passenger, then, on this ship," and he looked at me as if I were an angleworm.
"Even so," I said; "but – " and I was reaching into my pocket to get at the document to prove to him that I had paid for a first-class passage.
He evidently thought that I was reaching to get my card, because he snapped out, "I don't care who you are, you're a third-class passenger on this ship."
"Yes, purser," I said, "but this" – handing him my document – "will show you that while I am booked steerage, I paid for first; and couldn't arrangements be made for me to sleep in the steerage and eat at the first table? You know, purser, it's just a little rocky back there in the steerage – and you see I paid for first-cabin passage."
There is no doubt but what that fellow could read, but he seemed so horrified at a steerage passenger invading the holy precincts of first cabin that he wouldn't attempt to read anything that had been contaminated by being in the possession of a steerage passenger.
Anyway, he handed it back to me without reading it, with the remark: "I've only got your word for that."
"Um huh, purser," I said, "and when it comes to a plain statement of facts, my word is good for even more than that."
"You're a third-class passenger on this ship, and you'll have to eat third-class where you belong," and further conversation with me seemed to give him a pain.
After that unsatisfactory interview with the purser, the high and holy self-sacrificing sentiments that I had had just prior to my desire to try and shake that bunch of steerage passengers – that part of my better nature that made me feel for the misfortunes of my kind returned, and I went back to the steerage, "where I belonged," to share their lot – it was either that or jump overboard.
There was just one topic of conversation back in steerage – the rotten treatment we were getting; and it was the voice of our little democracy that we ought to try and do something. I told you in letter II that one can make better time getting acquainted on shipboard than anywhere else, but you may have missed that wheat grain of information in the surrounding chaff. But it is there, and already there were those aboard who had learned that I was doing newspaper work, so they wished the job of trying onto me.
If a protest and a petition for an effort to try and make things better, signed by a goodly number of us from the underworld who were American citizens, were sent up to the captain, it might mend matters, and wouldn't I draft it?
After my encounter with that purser – the purser standing high in the management of a passenger ship at sea – I had a fear that any petition we might make wouldn't be received with favor by the management, but my election for the job was so unanimous, spontaneous and hearty that I buckled to it and wrote a petition, in which I told the management what we American steerage passengers thought of what was being handed to us on our passage home. I told them we were steerage passengers not from choice, but owing to the fortunes of war, and instead of trying to emphasize the fact that we were steerage passengers, wouldn't they see what they could do to make us forget it? Furthermore, I asked in the petition if they wouldn't at least see that the stewards who served us our food put on clean clothes: that the white suits they wore were filthy when we left Liverpool, and that they were still wearing the same filthy suits. And also wouldn't they see that the dishes were given an occasional bath – that the knives and forks they were handing us turned our stomachs. And couldn't we have ice water to drink? Even had the temerity to suggest that they give us napkins – qualified the suggestion of napkins by telling them paper ones would be counted a boon.
I read my petition to the crowd and it was loudly acclaimed a choice bit of literature, right to the point, and exactly fitted the case; and they crowded around to sign it, and wanted me to get it into the captain's hands as quick as I could. I went up to first cabin to hunt for the captain and ran into the purser. When he saw me coming he looked even more aggrieved than when he told me to stay where I belonged. But I told him this time I came with a petition, signed by several hundred American citizens, and that I wanted to give it to the captain.
"We're in a fog now and captain is on the bridge; I'll give your petition to him when he comes off the bridge," the purser said.
"All right, purser," I said; "and you needn't return the petition to me. I've got a copy of it and a copy of all the names of the signers." And I went back to steerage, from choice now. I fear that I've always set too great a store on ease and luxury – asceticism has never appealed to me as a personal practice; but it would have taken a roll of money to have hired me to shake steerage now. My better nature, or something, had triumphed, and my lot was cast with that down-trodden, forsaken, and hopeless crowd of steerage travelers. A revulsion of feeling for first-class on that ship had filled my soul. They couldn't have hired me to travel first-class now. When I got back "amongst my own people" I was the recipient of so many tales of woe – I was so filled up with steerage passengers' grievances, that if my interior had been analyzed it would have looked just like the bureau for the amelioration of troubles at San Francisco after the earthquake.
Shake that bunch? Nay, nay. In my contrition of spirit I concluded that what I was getting was just retribution for ever trying to do such a thing; and I feared if I should let go and make another attempt to do it, something worse might come to me – although I couldn't figure out just what it could be. Besides, after that petition reached the throne, I'd be in bad with the ship's management, and another attempt to get away from steerage would be futile.
My-o! but that was a forlorn lot of passengers traveling steerage.
Our chief aversion was "Beef," chief steward of steerage (he was dubbed "Beef" by the sufferers an hour after we got aboard). He was big, beefy, brass-buttoned and shoulder-strapped, evidently hired by the line for his ability to drive over-worked stewards and handle immigrant passengers.
Almost immediately after boarding the ship he had earned the indignation of the Americans by insulting one of our country-women, a woman of refinement and culture, who was traveling alone – the wife of a banker. When she protested at the deplorable condition of the dishes, he stormed up to her and asked her what was wrong. "Why," she said, "you don't expect us to eat our meals off such dirty dishes, do you?"
"You're no better than immigrants, and you'll be handled as such," "Beef" said. And when she told him she would report him to the captain he bellowed out most insultingly: "Go ahead and report; we aren't afraid."
Subsequent events proved that "Beef" had no cause to fear the captain.
It was not a nice way for a servant of a transportation line to talk to any patron, immigrant or otherwise, voicing a just protest, and especially not to an unprotected lady traveling alone, subject to the care and courtesy of the transportation company she was traveling with.
Indignant? Oh my! I should say so.
If indignation could sink a ship, we'd never have got across.
As Chairman of the Protest and Indignation Committee, all that indignation was poured into me. I didn't know I could hold so much. And still it came. One woman wanted to sue the company when she got home for a million dollars, and she came and asked my advice about it. I told her I wasn't a lawyer, but being Chairman of the Committee on Protest and Indignation, I told her to state her case. She said she was going down a darkened stairway to the noisome, filthy quarters where they had to sleep; the stairway wasn't lighted and in consequence she fell down stairs and was picked up for dead, jarred, bruised, broken and bleeding profusely. The ship's doctor attended her injuries and charged her two dollars, and she wanted her two dollars back and a million on top of it.
Speaking from underneath the load of other people's woes I had aboard, to say nothing of those of my own, I told her she had, in my opinion, a just claim. To sue the company when she got home – this last advice I threw over my shoulder at her, as another woman was dragging me off to investigate the "awful condition" below deck where they were herded to spend the nights.
And still the indignation grew and grew. Our petition hadn't bettered matters.
We were steerage passengers – just that and nothing more, and if there wasn't some new, fresh, sensational bit of steerage news to tell there was always "Beef" and his insults to discuss.
One evening as curfew rule was being enforced (it seems there is a law that demands that female immigrants en route to the United States shall be ordered below deck at 9 o'clock), as this rule was being applied to our steerage passengers, both Americans and immigrants, and as they were being driven to the filth and stench and vermin below, indignation boiled over again.
One young fellow whose wife was driven from his side, swore like a pirate, but had to submit – we were steerage passengers.
"Beef" was boss of the steerage, and as he was standing near, to voice our indignation, I said to the men who were allowed to stay on deck: "Men, if any of us catch an officer on this ship insulting a woman, whether she is American or an immigrant, no matter how many shoulder straps or brass buttons he wears, I propose we knock him down, and if he is too big to handle with our fists, take a club." That little speech was for "Beef's" benefit – but things didn't mend.
The well deck was the outdoor privilege for steerage passengers, set nine feet down in the hull of the ship, forward the poop deck and aft second cabin promenade deck, with a railing across the latter to prevent cabin passengers falling off into the well deck. All view available for steerage passengers on the well deck was up into the sky – whence we might look and pray for deliverance. We could sit on the bulkheads that formed a part of the floor and lean our backs against the wall, which our women folk did.
Cabin passengers up top side would lean on that rail and spit on us! And they complained to me about it – of course they did – to whom else should they tell their troubles? – wasn't I Chairman of Committee on Complaints? I was, and it was another case of "Let George do it." There was no one to appeal to but "Beef." Captain and purser held aloof and wouldn't answer our petition.
I didn't have much hope in approaching "Beef" after my proposition of the night before at curfew – "Beef" knew I was driving at him – but I thought of Moses and how he had to appeal to Pharaoh, of the stony heart – what little I knew of the career of Moses was especially comforting to me – but since I'd been purged of the streak of yellow in me that prompted me to try and shake my steerage friends I was willing to do anything; so I went to "Beef" and said: "Say, those low-brow cabin passengers along the rail up top side are spittin' on the ladies and gentlemen down here in the steerage!"
The enormity of the outrage didn't faze "Beef." Cabin passengers had the privilege to spit on steerage. He wouldn't do anything. All the attention he paid to the complaint was to look at me and say: "I don't consider you're a gentleman."
And I told him if in his opinion I was a gentleman I'd go and hang myself.
And the indignation grew and grew.
All the comfort there was on hand was to lodge complaints with me and to express the hope that I'd do justice to the situation when I got home.
"Don't forget to tell about the rats, Allen," a man from Maryland piped up.
"Yes, touch up the rats," a man from Iowa admonished me, while a man from Kentucky said he had become so innured to hardship he didn't mind the rats so much, he could stand their running over his face nights, if they would only hurry across.
"Yes," a man from Massachusetts plaintively wailed, "it is hard when they loiter, isn't it?" While a man from Florida said that he didn't mind their feet so much – it was the dragging their tails across his face that got onto his nerves.
"And don't forget to tell how they served us those little, pithy oranges that day, Allen," a man from California broke in.
This was hardly worthy. The man who lodged that complaint ought to have been ashamed of himself, and his ingenuity for finding things to kick about was of a low order – he was straining at a gnat and swallowing camels.
It's true the stewards brought them on in their dirty aprons and pitched them at us – not the stewards' fault, they were doing the best they could with the tools furnished them – but steerage passengers ought to be grateful for any kind of oranges, served in any shape. While it's quite true, in my adolescent years, as a boy on the farm I have fed apples to hogs with the same courtesy, the complaint was too trivial to be spread on the minutes of the meeting. But it was voted to spread it, hence the mention.
Before the meeting adjourned, under the head of "New Business," a portly judge advised that the petition sent to the captain be rewritten and signed again with the home addresses of all signers opposite their names, and that I take the resigned petition home with me. Some of the ship's letterheads were pasted together until we had a sheet nearly five feet long on which to rewrite the petition, and on both sides of the paper there was not enough space to hold the signers' names, and an overflow sheet had to be supplied.
The next day all steerage passengers were subjected to a medical examination. Americans examined on deck – immigrants in the dining saloon.
A brother-in-tribulation, "New York," and I, after we were released from the examination, started down a noisome alleyway to go to our cabins, and we had to pass through the dining-room, where immigrants were being examined. We were in "New York's" cabin when a dining-room steward came to us and told us he had been sent to tell us to go on deck; that we were holding up the medical examination. No steerage passengers were allowed in the cabins until medical examinations were completed, he told us, and that he was ordered to tell us to go on deck.
We had gotten so used to being ordered up and down and in and out that we obeyed like dumb driven cattle. As we were about to pass through a companionway to get on deck, dining-room stewards guarded it and told us we couldn't go on deck. "New York" was ahead, and paid no attention to the contradictory order. They let him pass, but when I followed, one of the guards took hold of my arm to stop me, and I brushed past him. He fell down and began to howl before he struck the deck. I joined "New York" on deck and told him I suspected a frame-up, and that I would hear of it later.
Sure enough, in about half an hour "Beef" hove in sight and told me the captain wanted to see me in the purser's room.
"Glory be, 'New York'," I said, "let's shake the nether regions and go up first and see the captain. I've an invitation to meet him in the purser's room. We've been wanting to see that fellow ever since we left Liverpool, and I invite you to go with me as my guest."
"Only Mr. Allen is wanted," "Beef" vouchsafed, but "New York" didn't pay any more attention to him than if he'd been a toadstool – I was going to say mushroom, but I like mushrooms – and together we went to pay our respects to his nibs, the captain, "Beef" following on behind.
As we neared the purser's room we passed the entrance to first-cabin dining-saloon, and as we saw the luscious fruits and viands prepared, and took in the luxurious surroundings, we clasped our hands and simultaneously exclaimed: "Is this heaven?"
I was ushered into the purser's room, "New York" sticking to me closer than a brother. There sat his nibs, the captain, togged out with enough gold braid to scare a horse. The purser stood at his side, and "Beef" came in. There were some chairs in the room.
My! but those chairs did look good to "New York" and me. Neither of us had sat on anything soft for nearly a week.
An irresistible impulse to sit down on something soft seized us, and, unabashed in the presence of all that gold braid confronting us, we were about to sink into their luxurious depths when his royal gazooks, with an imperious wave of his hand, bade us remain standing in his presence. It was really an awful break on our part – we should have waited for him to have invited his guests to take a seat, but we were so dazzled and dazed by the sudden transition from steerage to first that we were momentarily shy a few buttons on the niceties – and besides, we wanted to sit on a cushioned chair – we ached to sit on a cushioned chair, I'm telling you, but we didn't – I thought of Lal and stood.
It was up to me to stand – I was up for trial before the most absolute monarch in the world, the commander of a ship at sea.
He asked me my name, and I told him.
"You are charged with assaulting an officer in the discharge of his duty," he said. "What have you to say for yourself?"
I told him the circumstances, "And, captain," I said, "that chap fell down mighty easy, and began to howl before he struck the deck."
The captain ordered the damaged steward to be produced.
The purser and "Beef" had him on tap, around the corner somewhere, and "Beef" led him in limping and sniveling.
"Did this man assault you?" the captain asked, pointing to me.
"Yes, sir, captain, 'e did, sir, thank you, sir. Hi was guardin' a door accordin' to horders, sir, and 'e pushed me over and I got an awful bruise, sir, thank you, sir."
According to the evidence, I was the one to thank, but I guess he got his thanks bestowed where they belonged, all right.
"Beef" explained that the man was badly hurt and under the doctor's care, and he turned him tenderly around so the captain could see where his pants had come in contact with the deck.
And those pants did look bad, there was no doubt about that.
"Yes, yes," the captain said, in a commiserating tone, "the man is undoubtedly severely injured."
"Yes, captain," "Beef" said, "and the other night at curfew, out on the well deck, Mr. Allen made a speech and advised a lot of steerage passengers to knock down officers on the ship, no matter how many shoulder straps they wore."
This was a serious charge – mutiny on shipboard – and punishable, I am informed, with instant death.
With a shuddering gasp at the enormity of my crime – or was it ghoulish glee at having sufficient evidence to have me drawn and quartered – I credit him with the latter sentiment – a human being who would keep two free-born American citizens standing in his presence – men whom he knew had been living steerage on his ship for nearly a week – with those chairs standing tantalizingly, invitingly empty – the wearer of all that gold braid, lolling luxuriously in an easy chair, filled with such viands as "New York" and I had seen coming through – I'll never believe that man would shudder at crime. Rather, I think he was gloating over my ignoble end, and devising ways of still more horrible torture – that's the kind of a man I think that captain was, and I'll bet on it.
But according to the rules he didn't dare pass sentence without giving me a hearing. While he was judge, jury and prosecuting attorney, he had to give me a chance to clear myself, so he asked me what answer I had to make to the charge.
"Well, captain," I said, "'Bee – ' – I mean your chief of steerage, hasn't got the story straight. At an indignation meeting out on the well deck the other night, as he has insulted women on this voyage, after he had ordered the women below decks at what you call your curfew time, I voiced the sentiments of the male portion of your steerage passengers by advising that if any of them caught an officer of the ship insulting a woman, whether she was an immigrant or an American, no matter how many brass buttons or shoulder straps he wore, to knock him down; and if he was too big to handle with the fist, to use a club."
"Beef" jumped up and shook his fist at me and bellowed: "If Mr. Allen says I've insulted women, he's a liar."
Right here is where "New York" shone.
"I would like a word here, captain," he said. "Mr. Allen is stating facts. Your chief of steerage has insulted women on this voyage."
That "impartial" judge, that embellished emblem of authority, said he had known "Beef" for a good many years, and he knew he wouldn't do such a thing, so, according to "Beef" and the captain, "New York" and I were both liars.
Then that bedizened judge turned on "New York" and said: "You look like a clean-cut, up-standing man" (this last was the unkindest cut of all; it's a compliment to have some men call you a liar, but he needn't have used that word "up-standing"; Lord knows, "New York" didn't want to stand up) – "how do you explain your associating with such a person as this man Allen?"
And then "New York" shone some more. He told the captain that he had found Mr. Allen a most agreeable and congenial companion on this voyage.
Oh, my! How this story does string out. I suppose "New York" saved my life. With "New York's" testimony the captain didn't pass the death sentence – he dismissed us with a magnificent wave of his embroidered coat-sleeve – the steward didn't die, but peeled potatoes, and I'm in New York, and Clinton only five hours away.
