One Way Out: A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America

CHAPTER IToC

A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER

My great-grandfather was killed in the Revolution; my grandfather fought in the War of 1812; my father sacrificed his health in the Civil War; but I, though born in New England, am the first of my family to emigrate to this country-the United States of America. That sounds like a riddle or a paradox. It isn't; it's a plain statement of fact.

As a matter of convenience let me call myself Carleton. I've no desire to make public my life for the sake of notoriety. My only idea in writing these personal details is the hope that they may help some poor devil out of the same hole in which I found myself mired. They are of too sacred a nature to share except impersonally. Even behind the disguise of an assumed name I passed some mighty uncomfortable hours a few months ago when I sketched out for a magazine and saw in cold print what I'm now going to give in full. It made me feel as though I had pulled down the walls of my house and was living my life open to the view of the street. For a man whose home means what it does to me, there's nothing pleasant about that.

However, I received some letters following that brief article which made the discomfort seem worth while. My wife and I read them over with something like awe. They came from Maine and they came from Texas; they came from the north, they came from the south, until we numbered our unseen friends by the hundred. Running through these letters was the racking cry that had once rended our own hearts-"How to get out!" As we read some of them our throats grew lumpy.

"God help them," said my wife over and over again.

As we read others, we felt very glad that our lives had been in some way an inspiration to them. After talking the whole matter over we decided that if it helped any to let people know how we ourselves pulled out, why it was our duty to do so. For that purpose, which is the purpose of this book, Carleton is as good a name as any.

My people were all honest, plodding, middle-class Americans. They stuck where they were born, accepted their duties as they came, earned a respectable living and died without having money enough left to make a will worth while. They were all privates in the ranks. But they were the best type of private-honest, intelligent, and loyal unto death. They were faithful to their families and unswerving in their duty to their country. The records of their lives aren't interesting, but they are as open as daylight.

My father seems to have had at first a bit more ambition stirring within him than his ancestors. He started in the lumber business for himself in a small way but with the first call for troops sold out and enlisted. He did not distinguish himself but he fought in more battles than many a man who came out a captain. He didn't quit until the war was over. Then he crawled back home subdued and sick. He refused ever to draw a pension because he felt it was as much a man's duty to fight for his country as for his wife. He secured a position as head clerk and confidential man with an old established lumber firm and here he stuck the rest of his life. He earned a decent living and in the course of time married and occupied a comfortable home. My mother died when I was ten and after that father sold his house and we boarded. It was a dreary enough life for both of us. Mother was the sort of mother who lives her whole life in caring for her men folks so that her going left us as helpless as babies. For a long while we didn't even know when to change our stockings. But obeying the family tradition, father accepted his lot stoically and as final. No one in our family ever married twice. With the death of the wife and mother the home ceased and that was the end of it.

I remember my father with some pride. He was a tall, old-fashioned looking man with a great deal of quiet dignity. I came to know him much better in the next few years after mother died than ever before for we lived together in one room and had few friends. I can see him now sitting by a small kerosene lamp after I had gone to bed clumsily trying to mend some rent in my clothes. I thought it an odd occupation for a man but I know now what he was about. I think his love for my mother must have been deep for he talked to me a great deal of her and seemed much more concerned about my future on her account than on either his own or mine. I think it was she-she was a woman of some spirit-who persuaded him to consider sending me to college. This accounted partly for the mending although there was some sentiment about it too. I think he liked to feel that he was carrying out her work for me even in such a small matter as this.

How much he was earning and how much he saved I never knew. I went to school and had all the common things of the ordinary boy and I don't remember that I ever asked him for any pocket money but what he gave it to me. It was towards the end of my senior year in the high school that I began to notice a change in him. He was at times strangely excited and at other times strangely blue. He asked me a great many questions about my preference in the matter of a college and bade me keep well up in my studies. He began to skimp a little and I found out afterwards that one reason he grew so thin was because he did away with his noon meal. It makes my blood boil now when I remember where the fruit of this self-sacrifice went. I wouldn't recall it here except as a humble tribute to his memory.

One night I came back to the room and though it was not yet dark I was surprised to see a crack of yellow light creeping out from beneath the sill. Suspecting something was wrong, I pushed open the door and saw my father seated by the lamp with a pair of trousers I had worn when a kid in his hands. His head was bent and he was trying to sew. I went to his side and asked him what the trouble was. He looked up but he didn't know me. He never knew me again. He died a few days afterwards. I found then that he had invested all his savings in a wild-cat mining scheme. They had been swept away.

So at eighteen I was left alone with the only capital that succeeding generations of my family ever inherited-a common school education and a big, sound physique. My father's tragic death was a heavy blow but the mere fact that I was thrown on my own resources did not dishearten me. In fact the prospect rather roused me. I had soaked in the humdrum atmosphere of the boarding house so long that the idea of having to earn my own living came rather as an adventure. While dependent on my father, I had been chained to this one room and this one city, but now I felt as though the whole wide world had suddenly been opened up to me. I had no particular ambition beyond earning a comfortable living and I was sure enough at eighteen of being able to do this. If I chose, I could go to sea-there wasn't a vessel but what would take so husky a youngster; if I wished, I could go into railroading-here again there was a demand for youth and brawn. I could go into a factory and learn manufacturing or I could go into an office and learn a business. I was young, I was strong, I was unfettered. There is no one on earth so free as such a young man. I could settle in New York or work my way west and settle in Seattle or go north into Canada. My legs were stout and I could walk if necessary. And wherever I was, I had only to stop and offer the use of my back and arms in return for food and clothes. Most men feel like this only once in their lives. In a few years they become fettered again-this time for good.

Having no inclination towards the one thing or the other, I took the first opportunity that offered. A chum of mine had entered the employ of the United Woollen Company and seeing another vacancy there in the clerical department, he persuaded me to join him. I began at five dollars a week. I was put at work adding up columns of figures that had no more meaning to me than the problems in the school arithmetic. But it wasn't hard work and my hours were short and my associates pleasant. After a while I took a certain pride in being part of this vast enterprise. My chum and I hired a room together and we both felt like pretty important business men as we bought our paper on the car every morning and went down town.

It took close figuring to do anything but live that first year and yet we pushed our way with the crowd into the nigger heavens and saw most of the good shows. I had never been to the theatre before and I liked it.

Next year I received a raise of five dollars and watched the shows from the rear of the first balcony. That is the only change the raise made that I can remember except that I renewed my stock of clothes. The only thing I'm sure of is that at the end of the second year I didn't have anything left over.

That is true of the next six years. My salary was advanced steadily to twenty dollars and at that time it took just twenty dollars a week for me to live. I wasn't extravagant and I wasn't dissipated but every raise found a new demand. It seemed to work automatically. You might almost say that our salaries were not raised at all but that we were promoted from a ten dollar plane of life to a fifteen dollar plane and then to a twenty. And we all went together-that is the men who started together. Each advance meant unconsciously the wearing of better clothes, rooming at better houses, eating at better restaurants, smoking better tobacco, and more frequent amusements. This left us better satisfied of course but after all it left us just where we began. Life didn't mean much to any of us at this time and if we were inclined to look ahead why there were the big salaried jobs...