The
ALASKA SOURDOUGH
Published for the Saurdough and
the Chechako as well, by A. B. Calla
ham.
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Single Copies Ten Cents.
Issued Every Tuesday
Application made for admission to
the Mail as Second Class Mail Matter,
and Conditional Permit Issued.
Home Office, Old Methodist Church
Building, Douglas, Alaska. Tel. 36.
JUST
Lift ye the stone of cleave the wood,
To make a path more fair or flat.
Lo! it is black already with blood
Some Sons Of M*u>tha spilled for
that.
Kipling.
Past jagged ends of rock, a hundred
feet below trains were bowling
through the greatest railroad cut in the
world. So that the Jersey commuter
might read his paper right in the ter
minal and not be stopped by the murk
of a tunnel, the Erie had torn Bergen
Hill asunder, and the gigantic task was
almost done. From the office of the
construction engineer on the brink of
the precipice it was a thrilling spec
tacle, and I had come to admire.
“To think,” I exclaimed, “that not
a man was killed!”
“Who told you that?” asked the
young assistant.
“Why, it’s here in this report senff
to the newspapers by your press agent.
He makes a point of it.”
The young assistant smiled. “Well,
yes, I guess that’s right, ’ ’ he replied.
There wasn’t anyone killed except just
wops. ’ ’
••except wnatf'
‘‘Wops. Don’t you know what wops
are? Dagos, niggers and Hungarians—
the fellows that did the work. They
don’t know anything, and they don’t
count. ’ ’
He said it lightly, as to one who
would understand. I wa& “his kind”
and he took it for grinteil thjjjt I ^ad
his point of view. To me, too, he pre
sumed they were wops— just wops.
Not men—wops. A negiglible quantity
Unintelligent, sweating creatures who
could be killed without counting. Low
brutes who worked hard with their
hands for a dollar and a half a day.
Pood for powder. Just wops.
It struck me there was a story in
these wops, and, searching, I found it
—everywhere. It lay in the subceller
of society, in fields, in splendid cities
boasting of their philantrophy. It
came in the open and flaunted itself
with talk about “the complexities of
civilization” and the glib utterance—
“Modern industry must have its vic
tims. ’ ’ And everywhere it met a dull
apathy, an unthinking acceptance of
the assumption that the hilling of wops
is a necessary bipod sacrifice to qur
comfort.' v }
I began by trying 'to find, out liow
many wops were killed, in the Erie cut.
But I have been trying for months,
and I have not learned the exact num
ber. I never expect to know it. No
one knows. The cut is only ten min
utes by tube from New York city, and
yet there is no record worthy of the
name. The 'nearest* approach' to ade
quate information I found in certain
newspapers. In April ‘1900,' when com
pletion Was still ' a" year distant, the
Hudson County Observer published a
partial lijt of the killed and injured.
It filled four columns. The total num
bt r of the .rad can cot be esc’mnt'Hi
T .1-iow of t v i'm* v-five n hose were
ei hor killed instantly or died within a
few days. Those who ling »r,»a and were
carried away by friends we13 never
sr 1 red against the cut, but were put in
th« list of n ■>- ellaneous ini tiro*!, winch
ci.itained h I’teireds of names. (And
the most remarkable thing about this
fatmendous undertaking, said the press
u<: ent, was chat it did not cost a single
jini)
Yet 1 liked these men who talked so
indifferently of the wops. I liked tho
young assistant. I liked the engineer.
And I liked the old blasting foreman.
A big, two fisted Irishmaan, good nat
ured, smiling, a man who gets things
done. I was told that every railroad
contractor in the country bids for his
services. He is said to be the best
blasting foreman in the United States.
He wastes no time. He spares no dyn
amite.
“So you kill a man occasionally,” I
remarked to him.
“Oh, they get bumped,” he replied,
‘ ‘ if they don’t get out of the way. ’ ’
And that was all he said on the sub
ject.
But there was light to be. had else
where, in other lines of work, on this
matter Qf killing workmen.
Last spring when, the new Municipal
Building was being erected on Park
Row in New York, the steel skeleton
had reached the third floor before the
first man was killed, and the contrac
tors marveled. This was the record for
bil buildings in New York. It is com
monly understpod that for nearly ev
ery floor of every skyscraper that goes
to make up Manhattan ls picturesque
skyline, a man gives up his life.
Closer figures are not available. No
one in fact, has any at all. Ten tijnes
as many men might have been killed,
and yet there would have been not
only no authority to prevent the out
rage, but no record of the slaughter.
When the Employers’ Liability Com
mission, appointed by Gov. Hughes,
discovered that, it was aghast.
“In all the large numbers of, im
mense skyscrapers erected in New York
city,” in recorded, “not an accident
or an injury that takes place is report
ed to any one (except to the coroner
in immediately fatal cases) the text
reads: except the coroner’s investiga
tion of fatal-cases—from the time the
first shovelful of dirt is thrown out un
til the last slate is put on the roof. Nor
can the number of killed and injured
in these trades be even approimated. ”
This means all classes of workmen,
remember—not wops alone. It in
cludes men who at least have organiza
tions to speak for them. JThe wops
l ave not even that. And if the num
ber of the dead among ordinary work
men is not worth counting, ima j n 5 t!>%
indifference "o the fate of the wops'
Even the WDihmen have beeome hail
ened. In all building oneration^ when
a nan is killed it has been the custom
for the othe s to stop for the day to
recover from the shock. But accident#
ai mg the wops have become so com
mon that this custom is no longer «»•
served when they are the vi’.fima
From ironworker to stonemason the
word is passed, “Just a wop”— and
the jpb goes on.
The men who dump refuse from
scows into the open sea also “don't
count.”
These scows are towed out regard
less of weather, and as the tows
plunge head-on into the green rollers,
and the tow line tautens, solid masses
of water sweep the scows from end
to end. Even sailors> seldom know any
thing so bad. But the greatest danger
comes at the dumping ground, where
the scowman must rim along a greasy,
slippery, twelve inch plank, to knock
out the traps. The scows roll and
plunge and are hampered by their tow
lines in a free sea action. Worst of all
'is when the tow bat swings around and
anxious to be back in harbor, cracks
the whip with its string of scows.
To give the scowmen some little pro
tection, congress passed a law- two years
ago compelling scow- owners to rig a
support along the narrow gangway. Of
course it had not occured to the own
ers to provide anything of the kind of
their own initiative. They even ob
jected to it, and had a law-yer before
the congressional committee. Wherev
er some one is trying to aid humanity,
there is always an owner’s lawyer to
object.' This particular objector gave
as the reason that the scow-men did not
need the ropes.
“Why,” he said, “they will cut any
rope and tie one end around their
waist and fasten the other end to the
scow, and they will run all around
there like a lot of rats, and if a wave
happens to strike them and they go
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