"Would you mind my asking what made you take to the road?" said Hamilton, turning to the first speaker.
"Not at all," 'Hatchet Ben' replied. "It's a very usual story. I'm a steel worker by trade, an' when I was workin' I was reckoned among the best in the plant."
"What did you quit it for?" asked Hamilton.
"Slovaks," the man answered. "Every year or two the Pittsburg operators would get together an' pretty soon gangs of foreigners would start comin' to the West. They seemed to know where to come, an' started work the mornin' after they got there, without even seein' the boss."
"But that could hardly be, I should think," said Hamilton; "that would be importing contract labor and they would be stopped at Ellis Island."
"Not much fear of that," the steel worker answered "the operators keep men in Europe just trainin' the foreigners what to say. These men come over in the steerage with the immigrants, advance them, if necessary, the amount of money to enable them to land, buy their railroad tickets at this end, an' all the rest of it."
"Dangerous business if they got caught at it!"
"They're paid to take chances," the other replied. "Then, when these foreigners come, they know nothin' about the scale of wages in America only that the pay is so much larger than anythin' they can get in their own country, an' they live even here in so cheap a way that no matter what wages they receive they can put money aside every week. The boss doesn't see any use in payin' them at a high rate, when they work just as well for small, an' down goes the wages."
"But they get a poorer grade of labor that way," objected Hamilton, "I shouldn't think that would pay."
"They make up for it by increasin' the power of machinery, by givin' a man less and less to learn and more and more of some simple thing to do."
"In a way that ought to be good, too," the boy persisted, "for the more a machine does, the bigger wages the man who runs it gets."
"I'm not a machinist," the tramp replied, "an' even if I were I should be in competition with the Swedes all along the line. Bein' just a steel worker, I stood for one reduction in wages because they promised to give me a better job. But this supposed better job was just bossin' a gang of these foreigners, an' they got after me because I took every chance I got to talk 'union' to these men, showin' them how they could just as easily get more pay than they were bein' given. That didn't suit the company at all, so I was fired, an' they put me on the black list."