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December 7, 1882.}
REDPATIVS WEEKLY.
LABOR IN MEW YORK CNY,
QUICK GLIMPSES OF QUEER LIVES.
New York Janitors,
What do you think of te queer lives led by janitors’ fam:
ilies? I know a janitor who has charge of a big building
down Broadway who has four little tots of children, and the}
don’t get down into the street more than oncea week or 50,
Two of them were born in the seventh story of an immense
iron building, jast under the roof. One of them tomy cer-
tain knowledge has never been down inthe street at all. That's
a fact. It will be down some diy. It was born only last
week. Where do you think the children’ 's play-ground is? It
is the roof, and a rare, good yard it is, too, with flowers grow-
ing on it, ‘and everything jast lik» a good big paved yard.
There is a high ledge arouud the four sides, £0 there i; no
danger of the’ youngsters falling off.. And there are clothes-
lines there, and tabs standing about, and clothes-pins lying
on the ground—everything so natural you might easily imag-
ine yourself im somebody's back yard.’ Those children seldom
see anything of the world down below; and their mother
hardly ever does, for she bas her hands ful taking care of the
youngsters, The re is a nice secluded life for you, with ni
there is some.
6 world securely locked out. It is as good as
rig | ina castle with the bridge drawn up and the moat full
of water. Bat even when t ater doors are locked the
Janitors are not always shut in from all the world. There is
a block of buildings in one of the principal business centre:
ot the city, all about the same height. Each bullding has its
janitor, aud each janitor has his family. When the outer
doors are shut and locked, and no outsider can by any possi-
bility make his way in, the janitors’ families begin to visit.
The r6ofs form their avenues and boulevards, their grand
promenade. ‘There is something slightly curious about that
way of living, isu't there; having your neighbors dropping in
through the roof, instead of coming through the door? It is
something like the way of living of the old cave dwellers in
the Southwest.
The Efeyated Railroad Conductor,
Watch him at his work from South Ferry to Twenty third
street, and then imagine yourself doing exactly the same
things a dozen times, fifty times, a day tor a series of years.
His ery of *‘Allaboard” opens the work. Every station re-
quires four distinct announcements—and when I say distinct
I mean separate, for no railway announcement is distinct. He
is stationed between two cars, and in each of them he must
announce the name of the next station, and then call out the
name when the station is reached. With 25 stations between
South Ferry and Harlem and four calls for each one he calls
uw °
they are left to themselves there will be confusion, a great deal
of crowding, some delay, and very likely a fight or two. So
the guard shouts: ‘‘ Let the passengers off first, please!” I
have often pitied the guard when I heard that call; to think
slow young Rete ands who leaves his wife standing on the sta-
tion platform while he rides away on the train, and with the
fractious and tardy passenger, who arrives after the gates are
closed and abuses the guard because he will not open them
agi ain, I: is a queer way of making a living, riding all day,
and part of the night, on the elevated rajlroad trains, with
hardly ever a chance to sit down, with constavt changing, in
cold weather, from a tropical temperature inside the cars to the
temperature of the poles on the platforia. Queer work, very.
The Turkish Bath Men,
Astranye mode of life in New York is that of the Turkish
bath attendants. There are at least 50 Turkish baths in this
city, with au average of fiveattendanuts each. That makes 250
men living day in and day out ul ee atmosphere a titule hotter
than anything to be found on the equator, anda great deal
closer ; living generally hajf- undergroaud for most such bath-
ing-rooms are in basements; living where full dress consists
of a towel dangling from the 8 waist; living where the floors
sre so hot they burn the bare feet ; where the chairs are so
hot you dare hardly sit down in em ; where an egg would
cook in a few minutes ; and living here “all | day and every day,
from early morning till late in the evening, the events of the
fey being the arrival of customers and the necessity of rub-
bing and scrubbing them, te.liug them how they are improv-
in appearance, and inducing them to take as many as pos-
sible of the little ‘‘extras,” fox the benefit of the proprietors.
‘Lhis is one of the queerest of the queer ways of spending a
lifetime. The bath-man comes in in the morning, exchanges
his clothes for a towel about his waist, and goes into the bath
rooms, where the temperature is almost unbearable. He is
constantly assisting people i in taking cold shower baths and
cold plunges, and the intense heat naturally drives him into
the water. But he does not catch cold, His only companions
through the day are naked men, for he cannot go oulside for
fear of catching cold. He whisks himself through life in a
shower of soap suds, bakes himself into a mummy jong be-
fore his time, shuts’ himself up inafurnace day after day,
and all for what ?—about $15 a week for the best operators.
The Steeple Guides,
There are the guides in the church steeples. Youmay not
think it, but there are at least 200 men in New work who
make a living by doing nothing but showing people to the
tops of the church steeples and poinring out the sights at the
city. They tramp and toil up the endless stairs 50 times
half their lives j is spent going up and down stairs, Ther.
one old man—an assistant in one of the big churches, wh
went into this business beforehe was 18, and heis now nearly
60. This gives him upward of 40 years of steady cfimbing,
and helping oiber People BP, and telling them what this roof
belongs to and that cbim
The Railroad Eneineer,
“I came into the city ina late train last night, and the engi-
neer attracted my attention. He was so big and jolly, and
so black and greasv. Nothing in the world seemed to worry
ox
a
not make much of a living at it either, Abont Mm
him, least of all any danger of accident. ‘There was no bag-
ge-car on the train, and I watched him through the front
window of the smoker. He sat on an elevated seat, on one
side of his cab, b, contentedly smoking a wooden pipe and watch.
ing the trac! There is one of the q jueer lives. This
He sleeps there all day, brings his train on to New York in
the evening, goes back to Philadelphia, and between 4 and 9
in the morving makes a sbort run up to Trenton and back,
‘Then he has all the rest of the day for sleep. He reaches New
York at 10 in the evening, and does not leave till midvight, so
that gives him two hours to get his supper—no, not his sup-
er, bis dinner, for the only meal he has had before this is at
6 in the evening, when he gets up. It is dark new at 6, re-
member, and it is hardly more than light when he turns in
again, so he barely gets a glimpse of daylight. What a queer
sort of lifethat must be, when you stop to think about it.
Asleep all day, and all night sitting over the top of an im-
mense boiler, flying across the country. Hardly a eight of his
family; hardly a chance to know whether be lives in a red
brick house or a white board honse, or a French flat, if they
had any such things in Philadeiphia, He is alw
of it. New Yorkers think nothing of riding on the elevated
roads, while people from other cities are generally afraid of
them. This is not because the New Yorkers
because they are used toit This engineer of mine is only a
track ahead, and keeping a close eye on steam-gauges and
water-gauges. They cannot go at the business too young, for
e companies must have mature men; and they cannot stay
e
‘h Lard fwork, constant danger, never-ending
responsibil aud the certainty of soon being displaced by a
ounger man, these engineers ought to get pretty good pay,
one would think---about $100 a week, perbaps, to give him
chance to save up something for the wife and babies. But
when one of them makes $3 or $4 a day he considers bimself
well off. Andhe goes on through all his working life, carry-
ing his dinner along in a tin pail, wearing greasy, slonching
clothes, and running a big risk of breaking his neck. Mise-
rable sort of exiteuce yousay? Bat, then, look how fatand
jolly he is with it and see how lean and doleful you and I
are, who think guescieos much better off, Why, I would give
five thousand a year to have that engiueer’s chest and arms,
A PARISH IN COUNTY FERMANAGH.
Father Michael Carney is the parish priest of Derrygon-
nelly in the county Fera ang h. He bas sent me an aecount
of his parish at my request.
The parish is bounded by the lower Lake Erne on the north.
Itis sitvated near Enniskillen. It is 13 Irish wiles long by 12
Irish miles wide. The population is nearly equally divided
between the two feligions. There are some seven hundred
Catholic families in
Half of the evi is mountain land which is let not by the
acre but by ‘ 's grass,” and bout half of this mountain
district is limestone which makes good pasturage, while the
other half is almost worthless anes oat Most of it could be
reclaiaed and support a population; as the Jandlords refuse
to spend money on it and yet will not give ) long leases, no im-
provements have ever been made on it. Not un acre in the
arish bas ever been drained. Only small patches of the
moorland have ‘boon cultivated. The largest part of the par-
ish is meadow land and this good land is almost entirely let
to graziers.
‘Lhe people, as a a rule, are desperately poor and many of
them are almost
‘The landlords tre othe Merquis of Ely, Captain Mervin Arch-
dale (late M.P.), Wm. Arc @ late John D.
Brien, of Monea, Lucius H. Hocti Ha, age De Fellenborg
Montgomery, “with a host of small re ‘They are all rack-
renters. Some of their lands are let at more than double their
valuation. Some of the landlords gave a reduction, but of
only one-tenth during the late bad years—Ely gave one-fifth,
—but most of them refused to give a single shilling of abate.
ment. Dearing, for instance. when aj to reduce his
rack-rents, said; ‘*My Rent or my Land.” Two farms were
abandong} from the inability of their owners to pay the ex-
cessive rents,” wd they, have been boycotted.”
‘As far as I knew,” writes Father Ca arney, ‘*these land-
fords did nothing to relieve the distress of their tenants dur-
g the famine of 1879-80. Ely and Archdale gave some
seed potatoes in 1879,—but their agent, Mr. Maud, sent the
tenauts who received ‘them a civil Bill process for 1s. 6d. per
stone the following winter!” Mr. Deering, of Dablin, made
a present of half a bag of champions to cach of his tenants —
but they had to pay the carriage on them from Dublin. If it
had not been for the charity of America and other foreign
lands the people of this parish would have been left to starve.”
Father Carney was seut to this parish in 1852 snd then
learned that the population had been decreased one-half dur-
ing the dreadful famine of 1848. He found the parish ‘full of
roofless cabins at that time.
ARNELL AND “tus TENANTS.
“Mr. Parnes inppassiveness and indifference,” writes Mr.
Healy, “was well shown when last week the landlord press
got up @ harrowing tale of his having evicted four tenants
who owed four years’ rent. warned him this would be ca-
bled to America, and would {here form the matter of farther
red-ochre editorials. But h uld not permit any step:
be taken to counteract the “nei, disposing of the matter
with a shrng of the shou
“The facts of the case are ‘these: A local solicitor named
6
out, and even if that was the intention, they could save them-
selves by paying Parnell the much lower rent than they give
the middlemav. however, is a cute lawyer, and will
never allow his valuable interest in the lease to lapse, and as
e bas six months to redeem, he will, by that time, doubtless
pay his head rent, and thereby again get the legal right to’
screw the unfortunate sub-tenants, for whom his eviction
would be the most fortunate event that could, happen, ”
THE MANCHESTER MARTYRS.
LETTER FROM JAMES REDPATH.
New w Yong, Nov. 23, 1882.
John Savage, L. L. D., Esq., Chairmai
RB Siz: :—Nothing but the imperative order of my
physician « would have prevented me m being with you
night to do honor to the memory of the Teich martyrs, whose
fying words have become the rallying cry of resurgent Ire-
tthe Irish race is distinguished above all races for the hon-
ors that it pays, not to Success, but to Fidelity. I's long list
of national martyrs is chiefly a catalogue of heroes who were
stricken down in trying to liberate their native land. The
whose graves are kept green in Ireland did not live to
see their people free, nor their own deeds crowned with
laurels,
But Ireland has never been a worshipper of Success. She
is satisfied with self-sacrificing Service, aud, in her chains, she
lingers longest at the tombs of her sons who showed how
they loved | her by dying fo:
‘The scaffold has been sanctified i in Ireland by the pure and
holy blood that has been shed on it forages. There is not a
barony nor a parish,—there is hardly’ * family—in Ireland
that does not cherish the memor, artyr to faith or
country. land is the Kachael of the nations “weeping for
her children beca arse they are not.”
But she will not weep forev ver As surely as there is a God
of Jastice, Treland will yet rise again aud take her place of
honor by right—equal and independent—in the triumphal pro-
cession of the great free nations of the e
Public honors are due to the naligned hurr of Ireland
not as a tribute to their memories only, as @ proclamation
to all the world that they died in trying 7 establish justice
and that their executioners were murderers and enemies of
the human race.
These honors proclaim that Irish submission to England is
not at alla question of morals but of expediency only.
Ireland would be justly despised as a criminal and a coward
if she could throw off the English yoke and did not try to do it,
Ireland would be unworthy of the honor of men of any
other race if, outside of physical struggles, she did pot
thwart, bafile and fight Ergland by all the agencies that she
can still command. Whenever she ceases to struggle, the na-
tions will cease to respect her.
It is the duty of every Irishman, and every friend of Ire-
land, to fight Fngland— a duty sacred, paramount, and not to
0 fight her is a question of policy—which
must change as vente dictate, or aspirations direct. or cir-
cumstances help or hinder.
ut, above all changing circumstances and policies, there
should be kept—never lowered nor unfurled—the flag of Re-
sistance; and on it, in Jetters of fire, these truths should be
inscribed—that E. gland has no rights in Ireland that any
{righman i is bound to respect; that the Euglish Government
in Ireland is an organized conspiracy against human rights,
which no antiquity can justify nor legalize; and that as long
as Irishmen, at home or abroad, have power to struggle and
to strike they shall try to translate into deeds the mossy
motto of Hrin go Bragh into the fiery war cry of The English
:
tee should be no aspiration in any Irish heart that (how-
ever long its journey may be,) does not .end at last in pe
National Independence. No other solution of ‘the Irish
Problem ” will put it at rest forever.
iffered from the patriotic men who discard the
ones of Federation and believe that it was only by Sepera-
tion that Ireland can prosper. But I have seen so much and
learned so much of English hatred and tyranny and bigotry
since then, that I have become a convert, sincere and abso-
Jute, to the creed of the Irish Nationalists, and, whatever infla-
ence I can wield, by pen or tongue, to expla n or to justify
or to facilitate tat movement I shall exert with right good
will whenever a legitimate opportunity shall offer.
Believing that it is better to go slowly than not to go at all,
I shall support the Irish National League as lovg as it com.
mands the confidence of the people of Ireland ; but, if I be-
lieved, —as i
aspirations of the Irish People, I wonld not waste an hour
@ sigh over a race of serfs, as the Irish would deserve !o
be ‘called, if they were content to be the vassals of a Power
at has persecuted them for centuries, and still maligns
where it cannot punish them.
me Rule as a means—not as an end; Peasant Proprie-
tonkin a8 a step—not as a settlement—taking everything
that can be worried out of England, or wrested from her, but
thanking her for nothing, and satisfied with nothing while
under her malignant sway—this should be the policy of all
Irishmen until ‘ The Difficulty” come to En gland, as come
it must, when, calling for belp in vain, Ireland shall assert its
independence and maintain it.—Very ti aly Zon
8 REepPaTH.
—_———_—.
EDUCATION 1N {REL AND.
King, in his recevt work on Ireland, shows that altough
attendance on the so called national free schools is not com-
pulsory, yet under the present system, unsatisfactory thongh
it be to ty Catholic population, the number of schools has
risen in forty years from 3,247 to 7,648, and the number pu-
pils eoroied from 281,000 to ‘apward of a millio
Ther een a corresponding diminution ‘of illiteracy
dui luring ‘the same period. In 1841 not less than 72 per cent.
land who could speak both Irish and Teena and $%3,000
who could speak Irish only ; thirty years afterward there were
714.000 who could speak both languages, and 102,000 who
- could use no other tongue but Trish.
to
THE bourke EVICTIONS.
Onr readers will remember that some weeks ago the editor
of this journal published a series of articles on Walter
Bourke and his Neighbors, in which the heartlessness, robbe-
ries and cruelty of the group of landlords within a circuit of
a few miles of Claremorris were exposed. He described the
condition of the tenants of Walter M. Bourke as he saw them
when in Irelan:
To-day we republish from the Dublin Freeman’s Journal a
letter by its special correspondent describing the same tenants
and their dwellings. Last week the people then threatened
were turned out into the roadside,