i now decided that pittsburgh would be as good a field as any, and one morning seeing a sign outside a cut-rate ticket-broker’s window reading “pittsburgh, $5.75,” i bought a ticket, returned to my small room to pack my bag, and departed. i arrived at pittsburgh at six or seven that same evening.
of all the cities in which i ever worked or lived pittsburgh was the most agreeable. perhaps it was due to the fact that my stay included only spring, summer and fall, or that i found a peculiarly easy newspaper atmosphere, or that the city was so different physically from any i had thus far seen; but whether owing to one thing or another certainly no other newspaper work i ever did seemed so pleasant, no other city more interesting. what a city for a realist to work and dream in! the wonder to me is that it has not produced a score of writers, poets, painters and sculptors, instead of—well, how many? and who are they?
i came down to it through the brown-blue mountains of western pennsylvania, and all day long we had been winding at the base of one or another of them, following the bed of a stream or turning out into a broad smooth valley, crossing directly at the center of it, or climbing some low ridge with a puff-puff-puff and then clattering almost recklessly down the other slope. i had never before seen any mountains. the sight of sooty-faced miners at certain places, their little oil and tow tin lamps fastened to their hats, their tin dinner-pails on their arms, impressed me as something new and faintly reminiscent of the one or two small coal mines about sullivan, indiana, where i had lived when i was a boy of seven. along the way i saw a heavy-faced and heavy-bodied type of peasant woman, with a black or brown or blue or green skirt and a waist of a contrasting color, a headcloth or neckerchief of still another, trailed by a few children of equally solid proportions, hanging up clothes or doing something else about their miserable places. these were the much-maligned hunkies just then being imported by the large manufacturing and mining and steel-making industries of the country to take the place of the restless and less docile american working man and woman. i marveled at their appearance and number, and assumed, american-fashion, that in their far-off and unhappy lands they had heard of the wonderful american constitution, its guaranty of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as well as of the bounteous opportunities afforded by this great land, and that they had forsaken their miseries to come all this distance to enjoy these greater blessings.
i did not then know of the manufacturers’ foreign labor agent with his lying propaganda among ignorant and often fairly contented peasants, painting america as a country rolling in wealth and opportunity, and then bringing them here to take the places of more restless and greatly underpaid foreigners who, having been brought over by the same gay pictures, were becoming irritated and demanded more pay. i did not then know of the padrone, the labor spy, the company store, five cents an hour for breaker children, the company stockade, all in full operation at this time. all i knew was that there had been a great steel strike in pittsburgh recently, that andrew carnegie, as well as other steel manufacturers (the olivers, for one), had built fences and strung them with electrified barbed wire in order to protect themselves against the “lawless” attacks of “lawless” workingmen.
i also knew that a large number of state or county or city paid deputy sheriffs and mounted police and city policemen had been sworn in and set to guarding the company’s property and that h. c. frick, a leading steel manager for mr. carnegie, had been slightly wounded by a desperado named alexander berkman, who was inflaming these workingmen, all foreigners of course, lawless and unappreciative of the great and prosperous steel company which was paying them reasonable wages and against which they had no honest complaint.
our mid-western papers, up to the day of cleveland’s election in 1892 and for some time after, had been full of the merits of this labor dispute, with long and didactic editorials, intended in the main to prove that the workingman was not so greatly underpaid, considering the type of labor he performed and the intelligence he brought to his task; that the public was not in the main vastly interested in labor disputes, both parties to the dispute being unduly selfish; that it would be a severe blow to the prosperity of the country if labor disputes were too long continued; that unless labor was reasonable in its demands capital would become disheartened and leave the country. i had not made up my mind that the argument was all on one side, although i knew that the average man in america, despite its great and boundless opportunities, was about as much put upon and kicked about and underpaid as any other. this growing labor problem or the general american dissatisfaction with poor returns upon efforts made crystallized three years later in the free silver campaign and the “gold parades.” the “full dinner-pail” was then invented as a slogan to counteract the vast economic unrest, and the threat to close down and so bring misery to the entire country unless william mckinley was elected was also freely posted. henry george, father mcglynn, herr most, emma goldman, and a score of others were abroad voicing the woes of hundreds of thousands who were supposed to have no woes.
at that time, as i see it now, america was just entering upon the most lurid phase of that vast, splendid, most lawless and most savage period in which the great financiers were plotting and conniving at the enslavement of the people and belaboring each other. those crude parvenu dynasties which now sit enthroned in our democracy, threatening its very life with their pretensions and assumptions, were then in their very beginning. john d. rockefeller was still in cleveland; flagler, william rockefeller, h. h. rogers, were still comparatively young and secret agents; carnegie was still in pittsburgh, an iron master, and of all his brood of powerful children only frick had appeared; william h. vanderbilt and jay gould had only recently died; cleveland was president, and mark hanna was an unknown business man in cleveland. the great struggles of the railroads, the coal companies, the gas companies, to overawe and tax the people were still in abeyance, or just being born. the multi-millionaire had arrived, it is true, but not the billionaire. on every hand were giants plotting, fighting, dreaming; and yet in pittsburgh there was still something of a singing spirit.
when i arrived here and came out of the railway station, which was directly across the monongahela river from the business center, i was impressed by the huge walls of hills that arose on every hand, a great black sheer ridge rising to a height of five or six hundred feet to my right and enclosing this river, on the bosom of which lay steamboats of good size. from the station a pleasingly designed bridge of fair size led to the city beyond, and across it trundled in unbroken lines street-cars and wagons and buggies of all sizes and descriptions. the city itself was already smartly outlined by lights, a galaxy climbing the hills in every direction, and below me as i walked out upon this bridge was an agate stream reflecting the lights from either shore. below this was another bridge, and upstream another. the whole river for a mile or more was suddenly lit to a rosy glow, a glow which, as i saw upon turning, came from the tops of some forty or fifty stacks belching a deep orange-red flame. at the same time an enormous pounding and crackling came from somewhere, as though titans were at work upon subterranean anvils. i stared and admired. i felt that i was truly adventuring into a new and strange world. i was glad now that i had not found work in toledo or cleveland or buffalo.
the city beyond the river proved as interesting as the river cliffs and forges about the station. as i walked along i discovered the name of the street (smithfield), which began at the bridge’s end and was lined with buildings of not more than three or four stories although it was one of the principal streets of the business center. at the bridge-head on the city side stood a large smoke-colored stone building, which later i discovered was the principal hotel, the monongahela, and beyond that was a most attractive and unusual postoffice building. i came to a cross street finally (fifth avenue), brightly lighted and carrying unusual traffic, and turned into it. i found this central region to be most puzzlingly laid out, and did not attempt to solve its mysteries. instead, i entered a modest restaurant in a side street. later i hunted up a small hotel, where i paid a dollar for a room for the night. i retired, speculating as to how i should make out here. something about the city drew me intensely. i wished i might remain for a time. the next morning i was up bright and early to look up the morning papers and find out the names of the afternoon papers. i found that there were four: the dispatch and times, morning papers, and the gazette-telegraph and leader, afternoon. i thought them most interesting and different from those of other cities in which i had worked.
“andy pastor had his right hand lacerated while at work in the 23-inch mill yesterday.”
“john kristoff had his right wrist sprained while at work in the 140-inch mill yesterday.”
“joseph novic is suffering from contused wounds of the left wrist received while at work in the 23-inch mill yesterday.”
“a train of hot metal, being hauled from a mixing-house to open hearth no. 2, was side-swiped by a yard engine near the 48-inch mill. the impact tilted the ladles of some of the cars and the hot metal spilled in a pool of water along the track. antony brosak, constantine czernik and kafros maskar were seriously wounded by the exploding metal.”
such items arrested my attention at once; and then such names as squirrel hill, sawmill run, moon run, hazelwood, wind gap road, braddock, mckeesport, homestead, swissvale, somehow made me wish to know more of this region.
the dispatch was republican, the times democratic. both were evidently edited with much conservatism as to local news. i made haste to visit the afternoon newspaper offices, only to discover that they were fully equipped with writers. i then proceeded in search of a room and finally found one in wylie avenue, a curious street that climbed a hill to its top and then stopped. here, almost at the top of this hill, in an old yellow stonefront house the rear rooms of which commanded a long and deep canyon or “run,” i took a room for a week. the family of this house rented rooms to several others, clerks who looked and proved to be a genial sort, holding a kind of court on the front steps of an evening.
i now turned to the morning papers, going first to the times, which had its offices in a handsome building, one of the two or three high office buildings in the city. the city editor received me graciously but could promise nothing. at the dispatch, which was published in a three-story building at smithfield and diamond streets, i found a man who expressed much more interest. he was a slender, soft-spoken, one-handed man. on very short acquaintance i found him to be shrewd and canny, gracious always, exceedingly reticent and uncommunicative and an excellent judge of news, and plainly holding his job not so much by reason of what he put into his paper as by what he kept out of it. he wanted to know where i had worked before i came to pittsburgh, whether i had been connected with any paper here, whether i had ever done feature stuff. i described my experiences as nearly as i could, and finally he said that there was nothing now but he was expecting a vacancy to occur soon. if i could come around in the course of a week or ten days (i drooped sadly)—well, then, in three or four days, he thought he might do something for me. the salary would not be more than eighteen the week. my spirits fell at that, but his manner was so agreeable and his hope for me so keen that i felt greatly encouraged and told him i would wait a few days anyhow. my friend in toledo had promised me that he would wire me at the first opening, and i was now expecting some word from him. this i told to this city editor, and he said: “well, you might wait until you hear from him anyhow.” a thought of my possible lean purse did not seem to occur to him, and i marveled at the casual manner in which he assumed that i could wait.
thereafter i roamed the city and its environs, and to my delight found it to be one of the most curious and fascinating places i had ever seen. from a stationery store i first secured a map and figured out the lay of the town. at a glance i saw that the greater part of it stretched eastward along the tongue of land that was between the allegheny and the monongahela, and that this was pittsburgh proper. across the allegheny, on the north side, was the city of allegheny, an individual municipality but so completely connected with pittsburgh as to be identical with it, and connected with it by many bridges. across the monongahela, on the south side, were various towns: mt. washington, duquesne, homestead. i was interested especially in homestead because of the long and bitter contest between the steel-workers and the carnegie company, which for six months and more in 1892 had occupied space on the front page of every newspaper in america.
having studied my map i explored, going first across the river into allegheny. here i found a city built about the base of high granite hills or between ridges in hollows called “gaps” or “runs” with a street or car-line clambering and twisting directly over them. a charming park and boulevard system had been laid out, with the city hall, a public market and a carnegie public library as a center. the place had large dry-goods and business houses.
on another day i crossed to the south side and ascended by an inclined plane, such as later i discovered to be one of the transportation features of pittsburgh, the hill called mt. washington, from the top of which, walking along an avenue called grand view boulevard which skirted the brow of the hill, i had the finest view of a city i have ever seen. in later years i looked down upon new york from the heights of the palisades and the hills of staten island; on rome from the pincian gardens; on florence from san miniato; and on pasadena and los angeles from the slopes of mt. lowe; but never anywhere have i seen a scene which impressed me more than this: the rugged beauty of the mountains, which encircle the city, the three rivers that run as threads of bright metal, dividing it into three parts, the several cities joined as one, their clambering streets presenting a checkered pattern emphasized here and there by the soot-darkened spires of churches and the walls of the taller and newer and cleaner office buildings.
as in most american cities of any size, the skyscraper was just being introduced and being welcomed as full proof of the growth and wealth and force of the city. no city was complete without at least one: the more, of course, the grander.
pittsburgh had a better claim to the skyscraper as a commercial necessity than any other american city that i know. the tongue of land which lies between the allegheny and the monongahela, very likely not more than two or three square miles in extent, is still the natural heart of the commercial life for fifty, a hundred miles about. here meet the three large rivers, all navigable. here, again, the natural runs and gaps of the various hills about, as well as the levels which pursue the banks of the streams and which are the natural vents or routes for railroad lines, street-cars and streets, come to a common center. whether by bridges from allegheny, the south bank of the ohio or the monongahela, or along the shores of the allegheny or monongahela within the city of pittsburgh itself, all meet somewhere in this level tongue; and here, of necessity, is the business center. so without the tall building, i cannot see how one-tenth of the business which would and should be normally transacted here would ever come about.
