NE DAY in May I left the little mill-town on the Ohio River and struck out north. Thoughts like those which I have outlined at the end of the preceding chapter occupied my mind.
I had seen something of menial service, something of commercial life. A glimpse at industrial activities had followed. One of these three aspects of the work of a nation was warped, it is true, by the unfortunate chance which had led me on to the crooked paths rather than to the straight and narrow ones. But I could close my eyes to that part of my experiences. Two had proved distasteful to me in their very nature. One, the last, had left me feeling clean, untainted, but still dissatisfied. I attributed my dissatisfaction to the circumstances which had led me to one of the smaller enterprises. More and more I became imbued with that old conception of mine that I was cross-sectioning the life of a nation. I must not stop before this task, for as a task I viewed it, was completed. It seemed to be something imposed, a mission, something I could not escape in any case and which I might well further. There was no ulterior motive in it. The thought of writing, of some day telling others about my life, was very far from me indeed. I was merely trying to work out my own salvation; and to do it in my own way. Just now the labourer was in my mind; I wanted to see more of him; I wanted to study him in the mass. Indianapolis was my immediate goal; beyond it loomed Chicago with its multitudes of immigrants.
I had set out from New York in order to search for that America which bore Abraham Lincoln. I thought I had found it. I thought that I saw the Lincoln all over the

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country, in little villages, little hamlets, little farmsteads and smithies -- wherever men sacrificed their own selfish ends for the general good -- and, above all, of course, in little doctors' offices.
There was, from the outset, no fear of the unknown in this second tramp of a hundred and fifty miles or so. I had only a little money in my pocket, it is true; I went in overalls; but I went, determined and confident that I could make my way without suffering. Nor was that confidence disappointed. I travelled like the travelling journeymen of old.
I will give three examples of how it worked out.
The first evening I came to a farm which stretched along between a creek and the road. House, barns, and stables were strung out to the left of the road, behind a stone-wall. The farm sloped down over bottom-lands to a quickflowing stream.
It was at the horse-stable where I stopped. A man who had just come in from the field was taking the harness off his horses. I bade him good evening and stepped in. Without leaving his work he returned my greeting and looked me over.
"I'm on the tramp," I said, "I've been working down at the mill on the river and am trying to get to Indianapolis. I'm a veneer-man. I wondered whether I could get a bite at your place and a corner in the hayloft to sleep in?"
"I don't know," he replied, still looking me over with a look of appraisal.
"I'm willing to pay whatever is right," I added.
"Take that horse, will you?" he exclaimed; for one of the horses was trying to get away from him.
I grabbed the halter-line.
"We'll see," he went on. "I've got to take the horses down to the creek for water first. I'll ask the missus."
"All right," I said. "I'll help you; how many are there?"
"Five," he replied; "yes, if you'll take two, we can make it in one trip."

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"Sure," I agreed, dropped my bundle, and reached for the halter-shank of a second horse.
We wended our way down to the creek, through a field in which the corn stood a few inches high.
"Nice corn," I praised.
"Pretty fair," he replied.
And when we were waiting for the horses to drink, he enquired, "Nice little mill they've got down to the river. Are they making money?"
"Hand over fist," I said.
"Why'd you quit?"
"Oh," I said, not caring to discuss my real reasons, "A mill is too small. They don't pay enough."
"How much?"
"Six, seven dollars a week, according."
He laughed. "A farm-hand gets that, all found."
"That so?"
I felt sure of the night's accommodation by that time.
When we returned to the stable, we fed the horses and went to the house. The man entered alone.
"All right," he said when he reappeared. "The missus is getting supper. We haven't a bed to spare . . ."
"Never mind," I interrupted. "I'll sleep in the loft. I'm trying to spend as little as I can."
And we sat down, till the "missus" called.
Next morning I was up at break of day and started brushing the homes and throwing the manure out. I was thus engaged when the farmer entered.
"Well," he said. "Working, are you?"
"Might as well help while I'm here."
"Come in and have breakfast," he said.
When I took my leave and asked what I owed him, he answered, "Oh, I reckon you've paid by your work."
"Well," I said, "thanks."
And I was on my way.
Another night I reached a very small farm just at nightfall. It was a dairy-farm, worked by a young newly-

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married couple. They were in the cow-barn, milking, when I found them.
Again I started in by giving them some data about myself. They looked at each other. I could see they were glad of a stranger's call. Their lives did not offer much entertainment. To have me there, for the night, was a break in the monotony of their daily grind. They were beginners; their work was hard; and since they had no help, they had to share it.
Still, all their talk at supper was about hiring a man, only to end in a sigh with the words, "Well, we can't. Not just yet. A year from now, maybe."
The woman was expecting a baby as I could see. I carried water and stove-wood in while the young man watered and fed the cows.
Next morning he took a cream-can to town, and, his road coinciding with mine, I had a ride. They refused to accept any pay though they had given me a bed in the house.
A third night which I remember was spent on a large farm conducted by a city-bred man who was trying to use the most modern methods.
Again I came across the owner in the barn. He was standing on top of a load of fodder-corn, and a number of men were feeding the horses of which there were sixteen or twenty, all of them splendid animals with high-arched necks, Percherons and Belgians. I waited for him when one of the hired men had pointed him out to me as the "boss".
"Well," he asked when he fell into step with me, "what can I do for you, sir?"
I told him.
"Sure," he said, "we'll put you up."
A slight shower had fallen during the afternoon, and the air was fresh -- of that spring-freshness which seems like a caress.
He stopped between house and barn and looked out over a field sloping away to the setting sun; the corn stood knee-high.

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"I've known that corn to grow six inches in a single night," he said. Then he turned to me. "Going to the city, you said?"
"Yes," I replied. "I'm a veneer-man."
He laughed. "I got out," he said.
"From veneering?"
"No, from the city."
I looked at him. He was still a young man, thirty-five maybe -- a pleasant, vigourous type.
"Hard on the women, though," he went on when he proceeded towards the house. "Farm life, I mean. My mother and two sisters are with me. I am unmarried."
"Well," I said, "of course, you can't have city conveniences on the farm . . ."
"You can, too," he interrupted. "One day I am going to build the right kind of a house, if I make a go of this."
"You have not been on the place very long?" I enquired.
"A little over a year," he said. "I'm all for it, too. But I doubt whether the women like it."
We reached the house.
"Mother," he called when we entered, "I bring a guest."
A white-haired lady stepped into the room. At a glance I saw why she suffered: she had lived with social niceties for the breath of her life. But she was brave, "game", for she adored her son. I somehow divined as much; and I treated her with formal courtesy.
Before we sat down for supper, I had become a friend of the family, a confidant of their troubles.
We sat till late into the night, the mother depicting, not without a sense of humour, though it was of the ironic kind, the trials of her life among the "rustics".
"But my son says that is honesty," she smiled, "and it is, of course. But it seems to me mere honesty is nothing much to boast of."
We laughed.
"When a man is worried about the mortgage on his

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farm," I said, "I suppose he has not much to say for the white table-cloth."
"He should," she answered; and again her son laughed.
"Mother doesn't believe in mixing homelife with business-worries," he said. "When a man takes his overalls off, he should be a gentleman even though he may be a roughneck in the barn."
"Above all he should take his overalls off once in a while," she added.
I had a room to myself, with washstand and bureau. It would have been an insult had I offered to pay when I said good-by after breakfast.
I gained an insight into the lives of men in the country, a straighter, juster view of things, superficial though it was. During the preceding fall I had looked on the farms which I passed with suspicion and hostility; I doubt whether the mere tramp would have been welcome. Now I kept up the fiction that I "belonged" somewhere. I thus began to feel that a new vista was opening up. What were cities and towns? Mere specks on the map. Here was the ground-mass of the nation -- the soil from which cities sprang, like strange, weird, sometimes poisonous flowers in the woods. For the first time I saw the true relation: the city, the town working for the country: the farmer, though not yet realized as such, the real master of the world who would one day come into his own. I understood that, before I could say that I had a fair view of America as it is, I should have to mingle with the men who tilled the soil. And no longer did this seem a formidable task, as it had seemed when first, in the east, I had had a vision of the continent which stretched beyond the rim of the coast-lands. I looked forward to it with pleasure and anticipation.
But I did not swerve from my immediate objective. The labourer was the man whom I wanted to study; unconsciously I understood by that the labouring immigrant: others who, like myself, had come into this country to make a living, but who had the strong arm to make a
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success of it. I wanted to see them in the mass, to weigh their chances for a real life. I myself seemed very unimportant, very irrelevant, for I realized by this time that mine was of necessity an exceptional case.
I also pondered a good deal on the curious plan which seemed to underlie my wanderings, though I could not see as yet that it was the natural and necessary outcome of conditions. Here I was, in the middle west, walking the highroads to my destiny. I had started life on this continent as a waiter, feeding the city-masses; had looked in upon straight and crooked business; had taken a glimpse at one of the essential industries, helping to make the accessories of civilized life; and at last I was seeing myself, in the future, among the fundamentals of life -- where the food was being grown for the seething world.
What had I done, so I asked myself again, to bring these steps about? Nothing! I had drifted. It was as if a higher power had led me blind-folded. Is it not time, I said to myself, that, instead of resisting, I help it along, that I assist it in bringing about what seems to be my destiny? Oh, how proud I felt when I surmised that one day I was to be master supreme of myself and my fate!
There is humour and irony in the fact that I should just have reached this summit of self-approval, this reconciliation with, and acceptance of, that which I fondly imagined to be my destiny when fate took a hand and played a little trick on me, so as to take the starch out of my most wonderful conceit. For Fate did take a hand and literally railroaded me into the next phase of my life.
This is how it happened.
I was now very close to my immediate destination. That day or the next, I thought, I should have reached the city. But the weather had taken a nasty turn. In the morning a heavy and cold rain had started, soaking the roads till they were mere mires of clayey mud. A drizzle persisted a afternoon.
I came to a farm. The owner whom I saw at once when I turned in at the gate was closing the slide door of a big

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red barn. I waded across to him and, with a greeting, stated my desire.
He interrupted me gruffly -- the weather was enough to spoil any man's humour. "I don't keep a boarding house," he said, "why don't you go to town?"
I referred him to the state of the roads, but enquired about the direction.
"Follow the track," he said and pointed north.
I went.
I found that I had to go about a mile before I reached the track. I was tired and wet. The last piece of the road was a veritable quagmire, that kind of tough clay-mud which smacks its lips at you when you withdraw your foot. I was hungry, too -- though I still carried some bread, the left-overs of my lunch. But since the town was said to be near, I did not stop to eat.
It was a relief when I reached the track; but I tramped along, walking the ties, for another three or four miles before I finally saw lights ahead. At the same time there loomed a water-tank to the right. On a spur of the opposite track stood an open box-car; its doors showed it to be invitingly empty. I still had ten dollars or so; but I was anxious to hold on to that much cash. I crossed over to the car and looked in. It was getting dark by that time; but I could see a litter of hay on the floor.
Here was an opportunity to save money. I had enough bread to allay the worst of my hunger; and I was dreadfully tired. The town seemed to be another half mile ahead.
My mind was quickly made up, and I jumped into the car. I raked the hay together with my foot, making a pile of it in a dark corner. I reached into it with my hands: it was clean and dry.
So I crouched down at the door and ate my supper. I carried a tin-flask with water; and I drank.
Then I lay down on the hay and covered up with my damp raincoat. In a very few minutes I was sound asleep.
A rumbling noise and a strange, half tossing, half

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shaking motion waked me up. For several minutes I remained where I was, lying still and staring into the darkness. Gradually an uncertainty as to where I was took hold of me. Then a panic seized me.
I remembered where I had gone to sleep. I shot up into a sitting posture and realized that I had a bad headache. I jumped up. There was no doubt any longer; the car was moving, rolling along in a steady swing. This was no mere shunting; the car was coupled to a train; and I was going God and the train-crew only knew where.
I saw grey light which filtered from the cracks of the doors into the dark interior of the car; and the next moment I was groping along one of them, clawing for something to catch hold of in order to pull it open. But I was wasting my effort and merely breaking my nails.
Just then the car lurched over, and I fell against the door so that it swung outward. In desperation I reached into the crack, trying to catch its edge with my fingers. But the car lurched back, and my hand was caught. With a yell of pain I jerked it free, leaving a piece of my skin in the crack.
I was beside myself with rage and fear; and in my foolish panic I began to hammer the door with my fists, and to yell and to shout at the top of my voice, till I was hoarse.
Then I sat down, in front of the door; and tears of fury coursed over my cheeks. I raved in insensate anger against God and fate and the world. I felt cheated and trapped, like an animal, like a wild beast. And as a trapped beast will -- to the very last, to the limit of its strength -- rather than give in, fight against that trap which has caught it, so I fought on again, without thinking, without reasoning: I stood and hammered away at that door till the knuckles of my fists were bleeding; till I had spent the last of my strength. True symbol of much of the immigrant's life!
Then I sat down again and held my head as if I were trying to shut out the deafening noise of that car, the roar

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of the sledge-hammer blows which followed each other in quick succession as rail after rail flew along underneath.
Sunlight replaced the grey dawn in the cracks of the doors, and the atmosphere heated up. The air became stiflingly hot.
I broke down; I relaxed. I threw myself back on that pile of hay. And now I seemed to become conscious of a mocking note in that succession of pounding blows of the wheels on the rails; and impotent rage took hold of me again.
It must have been afternoon before quieter counsel prevailed. I could not see the humour of the situation, of course. I did not laugh at the futility of, my planning. But I began to say, "What is the use?" And finally, I believe, I said "What is the difference, after all?" Still, that goes without saying, I had only one thought: how to get out of this.
But I began to reflect. Trains do not go on for ever. They get to a destination. It might well be, however, that this one was going to California or to the Atlantic coast. It might run on for days. We were going at fifteen or twenty miles an hour, I judged. But they also have to stop for coal and water. And not all the cars were going right through to the same place either: some were "kicked off" now and then; others were picked up. It was at the stops that I must try to call attention to myself. I resented having been so foolish as to waste effort and emotion while we were rolling along.
And suddenly I realized that we were slowing down. That put new life into me. My throat was dry; but as yet I did not think of the fact that perhaps I might have a few drops of water left in my flask. I got up and stood ready at the door. With a screeching of all the brakes and the clangour of clashing car against car we came to a stop. I started to hammer and to shout again; not hysterically this time; methodically, husbanding my strength. But even so it was exhausting work. Then I stopped and listened. Not a sound anywhere. Nobody could possibly

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suspect my presence: why, then, should anybody happen to come near me? I stood and listened for a long while.
Then I heard a shout and running steps outside. I broke into a frenzy of noise, kicking, hammering, shouting -- nothing happened; for just then a sudden jerk and a roar of clashes nearly shot me off my feet; the train went on.
I staggered back to my bed of hay and sat down. I was exhausted with hunger and thirst. I took my flask out, shook it, and inverted it over my mouth, reclining to catch a few precious drops which leaked out. I began to see the possibility of starving in this car. I felt strange waves of panic running over my consciousness. But I fought fear down: it led to insanity. Not that, I thought, not that!
I tried to occupy my mind: I looked at the light in the door-cracks -- it conveyed the message to me that the sun was setting -- there was a reddish glow to it as of fiery masses of cloud in the sky. And another message: the sunlight struck the front crack of the door: we were going west. It was not much information, but it was something; something to think about: I began to canvass the map of America which I carried about in my head. I indulged in conjectures as to our probable destination, then I started to doze; and at last I slept.
When I awoke, I believe it was the feeling of soreness that made me do so. I do not remember details beyond the fact that for a long while, probably for hours together, I lay perfectly still, in a kind of stupour.
Somehow the feeling of soreness departed when I was awake; whenever I dozed, it returned. My hands were sore, my back ached, my bones seemed to be jarred loose throughout my body. It was as if my physical self awoke to the consciousness of these things whenever my mental self went to sleep. I tried to keep awake.
Without stirring I noted, in a half unconscious way, that a thread of light came through the near crack of the door to the right. Daylight dawned. I wondered what stretches

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of the country might lay outside; what stretches we might have run through overnight, while I had been sleeping. Truly, I was going "out west" at last with a vengeance!
After a while I tried to rouse myself. I wanted to transfer my bed of hay to the space between the doors. It took me hours to accomplish that. My throat was dry, my tongue swollen. That was my last effort. When I lay down again, I gave in, yielded to fate. I did not care any longer even to arouse the attention of the train-crew by futile efforts. Had I tried, I should probably have found that I lacked the strength to shout or hammer. It was the lack of water more, I believe, than the lack of food which made me so utterly weak.
Another day went by as it had come.
Of the night which followed I know not.
But at last I see a young man with demented eyes and feverish head stagger out of that car -- into the arms of a horrified train-man -- gasp for water, and faint away by the side of the track in the greying dawn.
I was in a little town west of Springfield, Missouri.

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