A SALARY-DRAWING NEW ENGIANDER
EMIGRATES TO AMERICA
WILLIAM CARLETON
ONE WAY OUT
A SALARY-DRAWING NEW-ENGLANDER
EMIGRATES TO AMERICA
'6*?
ONE WAY OUT
A SALARY-DRAWING NEW-ENGLANDER
EMIGRATES TO AMERICA
BY
WILLIAM CARLETON
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1911
BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANT
(INCORPORATED)
Entered at Stationers' Hall
Published January, 28, 1911; second printing January
Third printing February; fourth printing March
Fifth printing- October, 1911; sixth printing
March, 1912; seventh printing
March, 1913; eighth printing
September, 1913
TO HER
WHO WASN'T AFRAID
2134S49
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER . i
II THIRTY DOLLARS A WEEK . . . . 18
III THE MIDDLE CLASS HELL .... 37
IV WE EMIGRATE TO AMERICA .... 53
V WE PROSPECT . . 67
VI I BECOME A DAY LABORER ... 82
VII NINE DOLLARS A WEEK 94
VIII SUNDAY 112
IX PLANS FOR THE FUTURE 125
X THE EMIGRANT SPIRIT 146
XI NEW OPPORTUNITIES 165
XII OUR FIRST WINTER 183
XIII I BECOME A CITIZEN 200
XIV FIFTEEN DOLLARS A WEEK . . . .216
XV THE GANG 234
XVI DICK FINDS A WAY OUT, Too . . .252
XVII THE SECOND YEAR 266
XVIII MATURING PLANS 283
XIX ONCE AGAIN A NEW ENGLANDER . . 298
ONE WAY OUT
ONE WAY OUT
CHAPTER I
A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER
My great-grandfather was killed in the Rev-
olution ; my grandfather fought in the War of
1812; my father sacrificed his health in the
Civil War; but I, though born in New Eng-
land, 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 my-
self 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 ex-
cept impersonally. Even behind the disguise
of an assumed name I passed some mighty un-
comfortable hours a few months ago when I
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 follow-
ing that brief article which made the dis-
comfort 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
A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER g
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 hon-
est, intelligent, and loyal unto death. They
were faithful to their families and unswerv-
ing in their duty to their country. The rec-
ords 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 cap-
tain. He didn't quit until the war was over.
Then he crawled back home subdued and
sick. He refused ever to draw a pension be-
cause he felt it was as much a man's duty to
fight for his country as for his wife. He se-
cured a position as head clerk and confidential
4 ONE WAY OUT
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 go-
ing 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 to-
gether 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
A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER 5
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 mend-
ing 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
6 ONE WAY OUT
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 edu-
cation 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
A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER 7
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 young-
ster; 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 be-
come 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 em-
ploy of the United Woollen Company and see-
8 ONE WAY OUT
ing another vacancy there in the clerical de-
partment, he persuaded me to join him. I be-
gan 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
A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER 9
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 automatic-
ally. You might almost say that our salaries
were not raised at all but that we were pro-
moted from a ten dollar plane of life to a fif-
teen dollar plane and then to a twenty. And
we all went together that is the men who
started together. Each advance meant un-
consciously the wearing of better clothes, room-
ing at better houses, eating at better restau-
rants, smoking better tobacco, and more fre-
quent amusements. This left us better satis-
fied 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 be-
fore us to dream about. But even if a man
had been forehanded and of a saving nature,
he couldn't have done much without sacrificing
the only friends most of us had his office as-
sociates. For instance to save five dollars a
week at this time I would have had to drop
back into the fifteen dollars a week crowd and
I'd have been as much out of place there as a
boy dropped into a lower grade at school. I
io ONE WAY OUT
remember that when I was finally advanced
another five dollars I half-heartedly resolved
to put that amount in the bank weekly. But
at this point the crowd all joined a small coun-
try club and I had either to follow or drop out
of their lives. Of course in looking back I
can see where I might have done differently
but I wasn't looking back then nor very far,
ahead either. If it would have prevented my
joining the country club I'm glad I didn't.
It was out there that I met the girl who be-
came my wife. My best reason for remaining
anonymous is the opportunity it will give me
to tell about Ruth. I want to feel free to rave
about her if I wish. She objected in the mag-
azine article and she objects even more
strongly now but, as before, I must have an
uncramped hand in this. The chances are
that I shall talk more about her than I did the
first time. The whole scheme of my life, be-
ginning, middle and end, swings around her.
Without her inspiration I don't like to think
what the end of me might have been. And it's
just as true to-day as it was in the stress of the
fight.
I was twenty-six when I met Ruth and she
was eighteen. She came out to the club one
A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER n:
Saturday afternoon to watch some tennis. It
happened that I had worked into the finals of
the tournament but that day I wasn't playing
very well. I was beaten in the first set, six-
two. What was worse I didn't care a hang if
I was. I had found myself feeling like this
about a lot of things during those last few
months. Then as I made ready to serve the
second set I happened to see in the front row
of the crowd to the right of the court a slight
girl with blue eyes. She was leaning forward
looking at me with her mouth tense and her
fists tight closed. Somehow I had an idea that
she wanted me to win. I don't know why, be-
cause I was sure I'd never seen her before ; but
I thought that perhaps she had bet a pair
of gloves or a box of candy on me. If she had,
I made up my mind that she'd get them. I
started in and they said, afterwards, I never
played better tennis in my life. At any rate I
beat my man.
After the game I found someone to intro-
duce me to her and from that moment on there
was nothing else of so great consequence in
my life. I learned all about her in the course
of the next few weeks. Her family, too, was
distinctly middle-class, in the sense that none
12 ONE WAY OUT
of them had ever done anything to distinguish
themselves either for good or bad. Her par-
ents lived on a small New Hampshire farm and
she had just been graduated from the village
academy and had come to town to visit her
aunt. The latter was a tall, lean woman, who,
after the death of her husband had been forced
to keep lodgers to eke out a living. Ruth
showed me pictures of her mother and father,
and they might have been relatives of mine as
far as looks went. The father had caught an
expression from the granite hills which most
New England farmers get a rugged, strained
look; the mother was lean and kind and wor-
ried. I met them later and liked them.
Ruth was such a woman as my mother would
have taken to; clear and laughing on the sur-
face, but with great depths hidden among the
golden shallows. Her experience had all been
among the meadows and mountains so that she
was simple and direct and fearless in her
thoughts and acts. You never had to wonder
what she meant when she spoke and when you
came to know her you didn't even have to won-
der what she was dreaming about. And yet
she was never the same because she was al-
ways growing. But the thing that woke me
A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER 13
up most of all from the first day I met her was
the interest she took in everyone and every-
thing. A fellow couldn't bore Ruth if he
tried. She would have the time of her life
sitting on a bench in the park or walking down
the street or just staring out the window of her
aunt's front room. And that street looked
like Sunday afternoon all the week long.
I began to do some figuring when I was
alone but there wasn't much satisfaction in it.
I had the clothes in my room, a good collection
of pipes, and ten dollars of my last week's
salary. A man couldn't get married on that
even to a girl like Ruth who wouldn't want
much. I cut down here and there but I nat-
urally wanted to appear well before Ruth and
so the savings went into new ties and shoes.
In this way I fretted along for a few months
until I screwed my courage up to ask for an-
other raise. Those were prosperous days for
the United Woollen and everyone from the
president to the office boy was in good humor.
I went to Morse, head of the department, and
told him frankly that I wished to get married
and needed more money. That wasn't a busi-
ness reason for an increase but those of us who
had worked there some years had come to feel
*4 ONE WAY OUT
like one of the family and it wasn't unusual
for the company to raise a man at such a time.
He said he'd see what he could do about it and
when I opened my pay envelope the next week
I found an extra five in it.
I went direct from the office to Ruth and
asked her to marry me. She didn't hang her
head nor stammer but she looked me straight
in the eyes a moment longer than usual and
answered :
"All right, Billy."
"Then let's go out this afternoon and see
about getting a house/' I said.
I don't think a Carleton ever boarded when
first married. To me it wouldn't have seemed
like getting married. I knew a suburb where
some of the men I had met at the country club
lived and we went out there. It was a beauti-
ful June day and everything looked clean and
fresh. We found a little house of eight rooms
that we knew we wanted as soon as we saw it.
It was one of a group of ten or fifteen that
were all very much alike. There was a piazza
on the front and a little bit of lawn that looked
as though it had been squeezed in afterwards.
In the rear there was another strip of land
where we thought we might raise some garden
A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER 15
stuff if we put it in boxes. The house itself
had a front hall out of which stairs led to the
next floor. To the right there was a large
room separated by folding doors with another
good-sized room next to it which would nat-
urally be used as a dining room. In the rear
of this was the kitchen and besides the door
there was a slide through which to pass the
food. Upstairs there were four big rooms
Stretching the whole width of the house.
Above these there was a servant's room. The
whole house was prettily finished and in the
two rooms down stairs there were fireplaces
which took my eye, although they weren't big-
ger than coal hods. It was heated by a fur-
nace and lighted by electricity and there were
stained glass panels either side of the front
door.
The rent was forty dollars a month and I
signed a three years' lease before I left. The
next week was a busy one for us both. We
bought almost a thousand dollars' worth of
furniture on the installment plan and even
then we didn't seem to get more than the bare
necessities. I hadn't any idea that house fur-
nishings cost so much. But if the bill had
come to five times that I wouldn't have cared.
16 ONE WAY OUT
The installments didn't amount to very much
a week and I already saw Morse promoted and
myself filling his position at twenty-five hun-
dred. I hadn't yet got over the feeling I had
at eighteen that life was a big adventure and
that a man with strong legs and a good back
couldn't lose. With Ruth at my side I bought
like a king. Though I never liked the idea of
running into debt this didn't seem like a debt.
I had only to look into her dear blue eyes to
feel myself safe in buying the store itself.
Ruth herself sometimes hesitated but, as I told
her, we might as well start right and once for
all as to go at it half heartedly.
The following Saturday we were married.
My vacation wasn't due for another month so
we decided not to wait. The old folks came
down from the farm and we just called in a
clergyman and were married in the front par-
lor of the aunt's house. It was both very sim-
ple and very solemn. For us both the ceremony
meant the taking of a sacred oath of so serious
a nature as to forbid much lightheartedness.
And yet I did wish that the father and mother
and aunt had not dressed in black and cried
during it all. Ruth wore a white dress and
looked very beautiful and didn't seem afraid.
A BORN AND BRED NEW ENGLANDER 17
As for me, my knees trembled and I was chalk
white. I think it was the old people and the
room, for when it was over and we came out
into the sunshine again I felt all right except
a bit light-headed. I remember that the street
and the houses and the cars seemed like very
small matters.
CHAPTER II
THIRTY DOLLARS A WEEK
When, with Ruth on my arm, I walked up
the steps of the house and unlocked the front
door, I entered upon a new life. It was my
first taste of home since my mother died and
added to that was this new love which was
finer than anything I had ever dreamed about.
It seemed hard to have to leave every morn-
ing at half past six and not get back until
after five at night, but to offset this we used to
get up as early as four o'clock during the long
summer days. Many the time even in June
Ruth and I ate our breakfast by lamp-light.
It gave us an extra hour and she was bred in
the country where getting up in the morning
is no great hardship.
We couldn't afford a servant and we didn't
want one. Ruth was a fine cook and I cer-
tainly did justice to her dishes after ten years
of restaurants and boarding-houses. On rainy
days when we couldn't get out, she used to do
18
THIRTY DOLLARS A WEEK 19
her cooking early so that I might watch her.
It seemed a lot more like her cooking when I
saw her pat out the dough and put it in the
oven instead of coming home and finding it all
done. I used to fill up my pipe and sit by the
kitchen stove until I had just time to catch the
train by sprinting.
But when the morning was fine we'd either
take a long walk through the big park reser-
vation which was near the house or we'd fuss
over the garden. We had twenty-two inches
of radishes, thirty-eight inches of lettuce, four
tomato plants, two hills of corn, three hills of
beans and about four yards of early peas. In
addition to this Ruth had squeezed a geranium
into one corner and a fern into another and
planted sweet alyssum around the whole busi-
ness. Everyone out here planned to raise his
own vegetables. It was supposed to cut down
expenses but I noticed the market man always
did a good business.
I had met two or three of the men at
the country club and they introduced me to the
others. We were all earning about the same
salaries and living in about the same type of
house. Still there were differences and you
could tell more by the wives than the husbands
20 ONE WAY OUT
those whose salaries went over two thousand.
Two or three of the men were in banks, one
was in a leather firm, one was an agent for an
insurance company, another was with the tele-
graph company, another was with the Standard
Oil, and two or three others were with firms
like mine. Most of them had been settled out
here three or four years and had children. In
a general way they looked comfortable and
happy enough but you heard a good deal of
talk among them about the high cost of living
and you couldn't help noticing that those who
dressed the best had the fewest children. One
or two of them owned horses but even they
felt obliged to explain that they saved the cost
of them in car fares.
They all called and left their cards but that
first year we didn't see much of them. There
wasn't room in my life for anyone but Ruth at
that time. I didn't see even the old office
gang except during business hours and at
lunch.
The rent scaled my salary down to one thou-
sand and eighty dollars at one swoop. Then
we had to save out at least five dollars a week
to pay on the furniture. This left eight hun-
dred and twenty, or fifteen dollars and seventy-
THIRTY DOLLARS A WEEK 21
five cents a week, to cover running expenses.
We paid cash for everything and though
we never had much left over at the end
of the week and never anything at the end
of the month, we had about everything we
wanted. For one thing our tastes were not
extravagant and we did no entertaining.
Our grocery and meat bill amounted to from
five to seven dollars a week. Of course I had
my lunches in town but I got out of those for
twenty cents. My daily car fare was twenty
cents more which brought my total weekly
expenses up to about three dollars. This left a
comfortable margin of from five to seven dol-
lars for light, coal, clothes and amusements.