CORRESPOND EN CE.
NOTES FROM THE WEST.
[wow A CORRESPONDENT:1
Cincinnati, September 24th, 1886. I NEVER come to this country without stumbling over some startling differences between our kin here and ourselves, which it puzzles me to account for. Take this last. Some days ago, I met a young Englishman from a Western ranche. He had run down some six hundred miles, from Kansas City, into which he had brought a " bunch " of steers from the rancho. As he would not be wanted again for a fortnight, he had taken the opportunity of looking in on his friends down South. In our talk, the question of railway-fares turned up. " Oh, yes," he said, " the fare is $25; but I only paid $16."—" How is that ?"— " Why, I just went to the ` ticket-scalpers',' right opppsite the railway depOt—here is their card " (handing it to me) ; " and, you see, my ticket is to Chatanooga ; so I might go on for another hundred and fifty miles if I wanted to." There was the business card, "Moss Brothers, ticket-brokers, opposite central depot, Kansas City, members of the Ticket-Brokers' Union." It went on to say that every attention is paid to travellers, inquiries made, and information given, by these enterprising Hebrews ; and on the back, a list of the towns to which they could issue tickets, including nearly every important centre in the Northern and Western States. Since then I have made inquiries at several towns, and find that the " scalper" is an institution in every one of them ; and, apart from the saving of money, is much in favour with the travelling public, on account of his civility and intelligence. The ordinary railway-clerk is a remarkably short. tempered and ill-informed person, out of whom you can with difficulty extract the most trifling piece of information, even as to his own line ; while the despised "scalper " across the road (generally a Jew) will take any amount of trouble to find out how you can "make connections," while furnishing you with a ticket, which he guarantees, at a third less, on the average, than his legitimate but morose rival in "the depot." But the strangest thing of all is, that even the Railway Directors seem to think it all right ; or, at any rate, that it is not worth their while to try to stop this traffic. One friend, a first-rate business man, actually said that he should have no scruple whatever in going to the " scalpers " when off his own system, over which, of course, he is " dead-headed." I heard several explanations of the phenomenon, the only plausible one being that it is impossible to control the enormous issues of cheap excursion- tickets which are made by all the main lines. But surely, then, the question occurs, " Why impossible?' At any rate, the average Briton is inclined to think that if such establishments appeared opposite the Easton Square or Waterloo termini, they would soon hear something from Mr. Moon and Mr. Ralph Dutton not to their advantage.
I gleaned other items of information from my young friend from Kansas which may be useful to some of your readers, now that there is scarcely a family in England (so it seems to me, a least) which is not sending out one or more of its younger members to try their fortunes in the Far West. This, for instance, seems worth bearing in mind :—" When a young fellow comes out from home, he shouldn't go and hire himself out at once to a farmer. If he does, he'll find they'll make the winter jobs for an Englishman pretty tough. He'll get all the hardest work laid out for him, and mighty poor pay at the end. Let him go and board with a farmer. Any one will be glad to take him fora few dollars. Then he can learn all he wants, and they'll be glad of his help, because they'll see it's a picnic. If youlike it, you can buy and settle down. If not, you can just pull out, and go on somewhere else."
The administration of justice on the plains is still in a primi- tive condition. The difficulty of getting a jury of farmers to gether makes a gaol delivery a troublesome matter. Another youngster, from Dakota, illustrated this from his section. There was a turbulent member of the community who, after committing other minor offences, at last got lodged in the shanty which does office for a gaol, on the serious charge of a murderous. attack on a girl who refused any longer to receive his attentions, and on her father when he came to the rescue. He had lain in gaol for some weeks, waiting for a Judge and jury, when July 4th came round. The Sheriff-Constable„ with all the rest of the neighbours, was bound for the nearest railway-station, some ten miles off, where the anniversary of "the glorious Fourth " was to be commemorated, with trotting-matches and other diversions. He had one other prisoner in charge, and so, after weighing the matter well, and taking the length of their- incarceration into account, came to the ingenious conclusion to let them out for the day, each going bail for the return of both on the following day. On the morrow, however, it was found that the chief culprit had not turned up, and the fathers of the little community gathered in indignant council to consider what was to be done. After some debate, the Sheriff-Constable gave it as his opinion that, on the whole, Dogberry's advice was sound, and they should let him go, and thank God they were rid of a knave, " the country having spent too- much already over the darned cuss." To this the Fare& conseripti agreed, and went home to their farms. Even stranger is another well-authenticated story from one of the most active and important of the new cities in the North-West. Amongst the first settlers there was one who had dabbled in real estate, and grown with "the growth of the city, until he had become- " one of our principal citizens." No one seemed to know whether be was a lawyer by profession, and he never conducted a case in Court. But one thing was quite clear, that he was intimate with all the Judges, had the entree to their private rooms, and, espe- cially in the case of the Judges of the Supreme Court, scarcely ever failed to avail himself of this privilege when the Courts. were sitting. He bad a capital cook and good horses, which were always freely at the service of the representatives of justice. Gradually it began to be quietly understood, no one quite knew how, amongst suitors, that it was possible, and very desirable, to interest the gentleman in question in their cases. He was- ready, it would seem, to accept a retaining-fee. His charge was fixed at a very moderate per-tentage on the value of the property in dispute, which nobody need pay unless they thought it worth while. Moreover, the system was one of "No cure, no pay." He gave every one an acknowledgment in writing of the amount paid in their respective cases, with an undertaking to return the full sum in the event of their- proving unsuccessful. It therefore naturally appeared to the average Western suitor about as profitable an investment as he could make. Strange to say, this queer practice seems to have- gone on for years, and no shadow of suspicion ever fell on this " principal citizen," whatever might have been the case as to- his friends the Judges. The strong individuality and secretive- ness which marks the Western character may probably account for the fact that during his life no one would seem to have taken any public notice of this peculiar industry. If a suitor was successful, he was content; if not, he got back his money, and it was nobody's affair but his own. Well, the good man died, and was buried, and his executors, in administering his estate, were astonished to find bundles of receipts from suitors of all classes and degrees, acknowledging the repayment' to them of sums varying in amount from $5 and upwards "in the case of Brown v. Jones," "in the matter of United States v. Robinson," " ex ports White," &c. This• led to further inquiry, and the facts came gradually to light. The sagacious testator
had, in fact, taken his per-centage from both sides in almost every case of any importance which had been heard in the Courts for years. He had never mentioned snit or suitor to any of the Judges, his visits to them being simply for the purpose of asking them to dinner, offering them a drive, or a bed if they were on circuit away from home, or interchanging gossip as to stocks, railways, or public affairs. And so for years, five honest men had been presiding in the different Courts, entirely innocent -of the fact that almost every suitor was looking upon each of them as a person who had received valuable consideration for deciding in his favour. I own that my experience—though, of course, narrow—is decidedly favourable as to the ability and uprightness of the Judges in out-of-the-way districts ; so that -nothing but what I could not but regard as quite unimpeachable evidence would have satisfied me that a whole community of litigants should have gone on paying black-mail in this egre- giously stupid manner.
I was considerably astonished, and a little troubled, to find so many of my friends among Northern Republicans
— men who had gone through and borne the burden of -the War of Secession — not indeed, sympathising with the Irish, whom they dislike and distrust more than we do, but saying;—" Oh, you had better let them have their own way. Look at our experience of twenty years after the -war. Until we let the Southern States have their own 'way, and withdrew the troops, and threw over the carpet- -baggers, we had no peace ; and now they are just as quiet as New England." To which, of course, I made the obvious reply :
— " Let the seceding States have their own way, did you ? Why, I had always understood that they went out because you elected a free-soil President, pledged to oppose any further extension of their peculiar institution, and that at the end of the war that institution had not only been confined within its old limits, but had absolutely disappeared. The parallel would have held if you had said to Mr. Jefferson Davies and his backers in the spring of 1861, Do what you please as to your negroes ; take them where you will ; it is a purely domestic matter for you to settle in your own way.' Instead of this, you said, You shall not take your slaves where you please, and you shall not go out of the Union. In the same way, we have to say now to the Irish,' You shall not do what you please with the owners of property in Ireland, and you shall not go out of the Union.' " You will be glad to hear that, wherever I went, there seemed to lm the expectation of a revival of trade in the near future. I can see no ground myself for the expectation, so long as all industry remains in its present competitive phase, and the power of pro- duction goes on increasing instead of diminishing. Why should men not desire as eagerly to take each other's trade this next year as they did last year ? But the knowing people think -otherwise, and I suppose that is good for something.
VACUIIS VIATOR.
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