Steerage passenger

“ It must not be supposed that steerage passengers are all immigrants. Odd as it may seem, there are many world wanderers who cross and recross in the steerage, who travel over great parts of the world, and who, in their class, are as independent as the more luxuriously accommodated cabin people. ”

“ If the cabin passengers had good cause to complain that neither their safety nor their comfort was sufficiently studied, the condition of the steerage passengers was infinitely worse. Men, women, and children were huddled like sheep in the quarters assigned them, no separation of the sexes being attempted. The berths, which ran on either side of the vessel, were not inclosed, and were without curtains. The women were compelled to dress and undress before the eyes of the male passengers, and exposed to their coarse remarks and scurrilous jests. ”

“ What must be the situation of the poor steerage passengers, about 100 adults and a numerous set of children? A very happy circumstance for us rather than the proprietors is that we have only nine passengers, so each can have a double berth to himself, a very great comfort indeed, especially when it becomes warm weather. ”

“ The steerage passengers may be roughly divided into two classes: those who go home because they have succeeded, and those who go home because they have failed. Those who have succeeded have not yet reached the point of achievement which lifts them from the steerage to the cabin, but still belong to that large class which goes back to the Fatherland for a season and then returns, to try again the road to fortune. ”

“ Guy looked askance at them, and more than half made up his mind that he wouldn’t take passage in the steerage. He didn’t like the idea of being obliged to keep such company for a journey of seven hundred miles.
“You may take this bunk,” said the steward, pointing out the one he wished Guy to occupy.
“Where are the bed-clothes?” asked the boy.
“We don’t furnish them to steerage passengers. Every man finds his own.” ”

“ I told them we were steerage passengers not from choice, but owing to the fortunes of war, and instead of trying to emphasize the fact that we were steerage passengers, wouldn't they see what they could do to make us forget it? Furthermore, I asked in the petition if they wouldn't at least see that the stewards who served us our food put on clean clothes: that the white suits they wore were filthy when we left Liverpool, and that they were still wearing the same filthy suits. ”

“ The first-class passenger, except when thrown against his opposite companion, or when some luggage falls upon him, is generally saved from severe contusion by the well-stuffed or padded linings of the carriages; whilst the second-class and third-class passenger is generally thrown with violence against the hard wood-work. ”

“ We were liable to be dumped at any moment. The passengers were on their feet, calling through the windows to the driver to stop. He was too drunk to reply audibly. Being the youngest passenger and rather slender and supple I crawled through the window over to the top of the swaying coach and slid down on the seat by the driver before being observed by him. Instantly the reins and whip were wrested from his lax grasp. No other act will enrage a professional horseman so thoroughly as this. The driver made a dive for the ribbons and swore that no man should take his horses. ”

“ One great convenience in these cabs is a cord which is worn on the arm of the driver, one end being in the carriage, so that the passenger may at any time call an instantaneous halt without exhausting his lungs. ”

“ There are no restrictions as to behaviour in these omnibuses. A passenger may smoke, spit and swear, inside or out, to his heart’s content. Moreover, he may take in with him dogs, ferrets, rats, birdcages and beer. The conductor smokes a clay pipe and talks, with the air of an authority, of sporting matters. Several passengers offer him drinks from their private bottles. He accepts [Pg 176] them all, and yet never forgets to collect the fares inside before going on top. ”

“ Fortunately, any serious restriction will avenge itself not only by the stagnation of many of the States, but by the paralysis of the great liners which depend on steerage passengers, without whom freights and fares will rise and saloon passengers be docked of their sailing facilities. ”

“ By that means great weight is saved?—Yes; perhaps one-third is saved in exerting an equal power. In stating my opinion of the probability of a profitable result, after twelve months' trial of three coaches to run regularly two hundred miles every day, with despatches only, I contemplated that the engines and passengers would be ultimately in one Carriage, because that plan has a most decided mechanical advantage in making progress along the road, and also in facility of steerage, and safety in going down hill, and fewer servants are required to manage one Carriage than two. ”

“ We can send you to New York steerage, on a ship sailing the day after tomorrow, if you speak quick. There are a couple of vacancies left. But you need not be afraid of steerage at this time. Owing to the war, the flower of America are going home steerage. The truly refined, the got-rich-quick, high-brows of the deepest dye, prize-fighters, captains of 259 industry, and card-sharps are all traveling steerage these days. ”

“ But to freight crews there is no danger more menacing than the “break-in-two,” although, happily, this danger is gradually growing less and less, with the introduction of air-brakes on freight-cars as well as passenger.
Freight-trains, when traffic is heavy, are usually run in sections, with as many cars to each section as an engine can handle. The sections are run as close together as they can be with safety, and, in railroad parlance, the first section of Freight-train Ninety-eight, for instance, is known as “first Ninety-eight” ”

“ The vehicle, however, in which the letters and packets are forwarded, in consequence of the wretched roads in the interior, and with the view of expediting the transmission of mail matter, is simply a light, open, eminently uncomfortable, two-wheel waggon, in which but one passenger can be taken each trip. Day and night, up hill and down dale, it continues its journey, changing driver and223 horses every two hours, only the unfortunate passenger being condemned to remain glued to the jolting uncomfortable car, until he has attained the end of his journey. ”

“ And I went back to steerage, from choice now. I fear that I've always set too great a store on ease and luxury—asceticism has never appealed to me as a personal practice; but it would have taken a roll of money 267 to have hired me to shake steerage now. My better nature, or something, had triumphed, and my lot was cast with that down-trodden, forsaken, and hopeless crowd of steerage travelers. A revulsion of feeling for first-class on that ship had filled my soul. They couldn't have hired me to travel first-class now. ”

“ Steering Gear.—The loss of a ship's rudder is a small loss comparatively with that of the breakage or carrying away of an essential part of the steering gear of a motor carriage, especially of a high-speed car. The ship will continue to float and in most cases the stopping of the engines removes immediate danger from collision. With a broken steering arm or connecting-rod a car with its occupants may be hurled into a ditch, or ravine, or river before the driver has realised what has happened, and long before the brakes could do any good. ”

“ There is not the faintest indication of a breeze, and the iron tires of a heavy freight wagon, laboring slowly along, ring out like the music of tiny bells, close and smooth, as though the master of the baton were directing a legato movement. The driver walks by the side of his team, thrashing one hand against his shoulder and holding the lines with the other; the horses are half hidden in the steam of their own providing and are frosted even to their flanks. Thunder and Mars! but it is cold! and a cloud of cold air rushes into the car with me. ”

“ The well-fed, well-defended passenger, with muffled neck and arms thrust to the elbow in the pockets of his dreadnought, rubbed shoulders with the half-paralyzed and shivering wretch that shuffled amid the hurrying throng, often apparently without other object than that of joining in the stream of fellow-creatures, whom he could resemble in no other way. Carriage after carriage rolled past, the children of affluence for their tenants, interchanging careless comments, or looking with languid and heedless gaze upon the squalid, the impoverished, the abandoned, the degraded, that, alas! ”

“ His cabriolet was gorgeously painted—a bright red; and wherever we went, City or West End, Paddington or Holloway, North, East, West, or South, there was the red cab, bumping up against the posts at the street corners, and turning in and out, among hackney-coaches, and drays, and carts, and waggons, and omnibuses, and contriving by some strange means or other, to get out of places which no other vehicle but the red cab could ever by any possibility have contrived to get into at all. Our fondness for that red cab was unbounded. ”

“ On the occasion of my last visit I found myself as usual in the street, followed by a street porter carrying my luggage and addressing despairing signals to all the cabs trotting quickly past amid the driving rain. After ten minutes of futile efforts a driver, more sensible than the others, and hidden in his triple cape, checks his horses. With a single bound I am beside the cab, and opening, the door with a kind of frenzy, jump in. ”

“ When this happened, our driver brought his whip-lash heavily across the sleeper as he passed him. The driver of a post-carriage has the right to thrash a common driver who does not get out of his way, and rarely lets the opportunity pass. ”

“ The rattling of the windows, the vibration of the carriage, the banging of doors and shouting of porters at the stations, the prolonged and ear-piercing shriek of the whistle, occurring at such moments as to convince the thinking mind that it is not let off with any good intention or to serve any useful purpose, but simply to gratify the torturing instinct of the engine-driver at the expense of the passengers' nerves and tempers—all these only aggravate any trouble which may be part of one's invisible luggage. ”

“ Looking at our subject from the widest standpoint, however, it is evident that the dangers that threaten a passenger on the steam-cars are more numerous than the passenger himself has any idea of, and these dangers are very uncertain in their nature and difficult to guard against. ”

“ Suddenly a passenger-train came up with the usual caution in such circumstances, nevertheless at a smart rattling pace, for “usual caution” does not take into account or provide for the apparition of stout elderly females on the line. The driver of the passenger engine saw her, shut off steam, shouted, applied the brakes and whistled furiously. ”

“ In heavy frost the passengers must be half dead with cold, but they care little for that if they can go fast. The accommodations are as follows: In front sits the driver, with usually a conductor or passenger by his side; a variety of packages, large and small, is stowed away under his leather cushion; when the brake must be put on, an operation often involving the safety of the vehicle, his right foot is planted upon an iron bar which presses by a leverage upon the rear wheels ”

“ The tail lights had been growing dim, but now, slowly, the cab began to gain. Other cars, headed for the ferry, shot out of the fog and into it, honking warning horns at the crazily lurching machine that burned the road in pursuit of the blue limousine. The stony faces of the three men in the cab never deviated from their straight glare into the gloom ahead.
The speed of the big car was slackening. The driver of the cab grinned wryly.
“He knows the ropes. Speed cop in this burg ahead lies awake nights thinking up new ways of raising hell for speedy drivers,” he explained. ”

“ The ’buses do not confine themselves to the middle of the roadway and allow passengers to pick and fight their way through a crowd of vehicles, New York-like; they pull up to the curb to allow passengers to enter or leave without the least possibility of danger or trouble. Conductors will also leave their perch, approach the sidewalk (Anglice, pavement) to consult or advise with a prospective passenger who is in doubt as to which ’bus he should take. Time seems of no importance: they are not in such a rush or whirl of excitement as we are. ”

“ Instantly, as the wheels ceased to turn, a young man in the smartest livery imaginable, green garnished with gold, leaped smartly from the driver's seat, with military precision opened the door of the tonneau and, holding it, immobilised himself into the semblance of a waxwork image with the dispassionate eye, the firm mouth, and the closely razored, square jowls of the model chauffeur. ”

“ After waiting for some time, and hailing by mistake half a dozen coal-wagons and carriers’ carts, you perceive an omnibus creeping by at a snail’s pace, enter, and squeeze yourself into a seat behind the door. You cannot see to the top of it for the fog, so have no fear of your tailor recognising you, should he happen to be inside—one comfort out of so many evils. While you are sitting, and congratulating yourself that you have escaped so well, up comes a cab-horse with his head through the open door, and his hot nostrils on your face. ”

“ It was the forepart of the steerage, so far as I could gather, with two rows of bulkheads forming a little corridor, at the extremity of which, aft, I could faintly distinguish the glimmering outlines of cases of light cargo. Forward of the hatch, through which we had descended, there stood a solid bulkhead, so there was nothing to be seen that way. The doors of the cabins opened out of the little corridor; they were mere pigeon-holes; but then these 'tweendecks were very low, and while I stood erect I felt the crown of the wideawake I wore brushing the planks. ”