Coming Nation from Girard, Kansas • 6

THE COMING iNATION through the revivalists in front, who were putting on hats and coats, preparing to go. He stepped close to the little mother in gray and' put out his hand toward her arm. After two attempts he gave a nervous tug at her sleeve. She turned and looked at him, her eyes strangely bright, as though reminded of her own boy by the slim youth of seventeen. "Mother" quavered the boy.

"Can't we find a quiet place to talk. I ran away to find a home." "Hey, youse! Hey, youse, Slim Jim!" cried the self-appointed guardian of "Slim Jim" with the temerity of drunkenness, glaring glassy-eyed at the deserter. "Look out! She'll hypnertize youse." The little Jew ring-seller and the man with the hypodermic needle hovering near the door, moved diplomatically outside. With the suggestion and assistance of several ushers the inebriate followed obstinately through the door. "What's the dope!" he cried to the man with the hypo needle, waiting for him outside.

"You don't t'ink dat kid got religion?" "No," answered the opium fiend. "Maybe dat was de kid's really truly mother, like you read it in de story books." deserve it Think how they feel when they speak your name. Think of their daily anguish. Think of them," she spread her arms wide in entreaty "and go home," Mentally a number of melodramatic-minded wrecks marched forward. But only mentally; each imagining how he would look shambling up the aisle, throwing off his shackles of sin, and none getting farther than the stimulating thought.

Nobody moved; least of all the white-faced youth between the down-and-outer and the dope-seller. March music was struck up the leader clapped his hands, commencing, "I'm coming home, I'm coming ho-o-ome Nobody came. The song ceased, the meeting broke up. Like boys the lumbering humans pushed and pigged through the doors. The white-faced youth sat alone, head down in thought.

"Hey, youse! Ain't youse comin' along, Slim Jim?" called his protector, lurching back to the lingerer. "In a minute. Go ahead," urged the young fellow, slipping to the aisle and edging his way timidly woman came to me and asked nre about my son. She became interested, offered to search for him, and for two years the search has gone on. I want you to listen now.

I want you to understand and know how your mothers feel It's hard for me to tell you this. But it may do you some good. "I hoped that my years of working for God had washed the old blot away. I hoped and prayed to get my boy back. I felt I deserved him, now that I could mother him." Her lower lip trembled, she took a step forward to keep her balance.

"They found my son last week, he is seventeen years old, last week, at a school down in Virginia. I dropped my work and took a train to see him. I didn't stop for a change of clothes. When I reached ihe school 1 learned" she swayed unsteadily and pressed her lips firmly "that he had run away the night before. No one knew where." She stood swaying, her eyes fiercely fixed on tho sottishly sympathetic ones before her.

"I want you men," she cried, "to know how your mothers feel. I would give my life to have my boy where I could watch and guard over him. I want him. I want him. But he is denied to me.

It may be that I deserved it because of my sins. I will not question God's will. But your mothers do not From the Land of Grabbenheims ByMelnotteStapleton was the last steamer from the Island of Saint Michael, Alaska, and her name was the "Northwestern," owned and controlled by the Guggen-heims, who also own and control Alaska. The cold wind blew on that October 18, 1912, and with it came the dullness of the when a naked light would flicker down in "No. 1 hold," you might imagine the strain on the leftover's lungs.

In towns I have seen notices issued by the anti-consumption people: "To prevent consumption sleep with your window open." There's a fine field for those folks to plow on those boats running next door to the North Pole. The perishable food for the Henrys was stored 2 North Pole, giving birth to the long, lone winter. 'i I- lack of toilet facilities, and the hideous consequences when flushing with a hydrant was attempted. Alaska has an abundant fresh-water supply, yet neither at Nome nor St. Michael were the water tanks replenished.

Stephen Birch, who is closely allied with the Guggenheim interests, has stated before a Congressional committee the control of these interests over Alaskan treasures and transportation is almost complete. From 1880 to 1909 $150,000,000 in gold has been taken from Alaska, two-thirds from placers, and the country has been but scratched. During all this time when wealth in exhaustless streams poured out of Alaska, the ships that bore the men that dug the gold have been mighty thin around the hulls, and mighty shoddy around the engines, and almighty sloppy as to accommodations for passengers and crew. The Northwestern S. S.

the forerunning company before the merger with the Black-ball Line, now Alaska S. S. was built as a profit plundering thing by one John Rosene, who before the eventful 1900, at Nome, was a practical tailor at Ottawa, 111. The S. S.

Orazaba, now the Northwestern, was purchased by him from the Ward Line which runs to Cuba from New York. When all looked fat and fine for watermelon picking, along happens the heavy villains, Morganheims, who flattered and fooled the smaller capitalist, feeding John's vanity with some well-thought words. Mr. J. P.

Morgan said to him, "Mr. Rosene, I believe you are the Moses appointed by Destiny to blaze our trail through the Alaskan wilderness." Alaska with a prospective profit of $400,000,000 in coal, its untold wealth in copper, gold and fish, is like a baby in the hands of the infanticide, who controls the copper river and Northwestern Railroad and the ships that ply between Alaska and the United States a perfect system of huge monopoly. A petition is in the writer's care signed by about three hundred Nome steerage passengers of the Northwestern, they complain of the unsafe and unsanitary condition of the said vessel on the voyage herein described. The petition reads like a congress of names re the brotherhood of mankind, from the Almond-eyed Chinaman to the No-Save Slave. Ten days later the vessel steamed slowly up Puget Sound, picking its way past darting ferry boats.

The captain leaned over the rail and spit a comet of saliva from the bridge in the direction of the huddled left-overs "riding steerage." The October sun smiled pleasantly on those unwashed, be-whiskered proletarians, who were returning dejected from a land, where it is said: "There's neither law of God nor man." They stood in groups discussing the frightful condition of Alaska since the advent of the Grabbs and the unsanitary state of the ship that brought them back to civilization and now that it was near over it seemed to their minds like -a hideous nightmare. A Chinaman, Wong Art, ascended the companion-way from "No. 1 hold" where he, with a score of others, had lived a life of filth for several days. Shading his eyes he glanced ahead over the sparkling, dancing, sun-bathed water of Elliott Bay. Hefl was happy so happy for the trip of profit above humanity was at an end.

As the sun wends its way south, the shallow Bering Sea freezes, and those of the army of the grand tomorrow, who do not care for the splendid isolation, book passage on the last steamer, that leaves at the eleventh hour of "freeze-up." The following day, the steamer without ballast arrives in the Nome roadstead, and after filling her passenger accommodation like the inside of a sardine can, departs at sunset. I will' only refer to the persons who travel steerage for they, also during the trip through life, travel in the steerage of Society. Our old friend, Henry Dubb on the said boat, slept on a filthy canvass that is known in technical language as sac-en-bottom, and those canvases were arranged in tiers five high. No blankets, nor pillows, nor mattresses were provided only rats that peeked and squeeked at one with brazen impudence. The place where those Henrys slept was on the lower deck, to be accurate, the "No.

1 hold," where neither light o' day, nor pure air penetrated. Of the three hundred riding steerage, two hundred and twenty slept in a black-hole of filth, the balance in the fore-peak on the lower deck. We'll take a mental journey through "No. 1 hold." It is a place where the knights of profit pack freight on the trip to Alaska when the passenger list is small. It is three decks from fresh air, four decks from service or life-boats, and a million miles from sanitation, and you come and go from that Hell-hole through a space where a hatch-cover has been removed, which measures 4 ft.x4 ft.

the only means of ventilation during rough weather when the boys are down with tml-de-mer and also at night when one is being rocked in the cradle of the deep. It is not necessary to have permanent ventilators with large cowel heads to catch the fresh ozone for freight. It is preposterous to have like arrangements for two hundred and twenty left-overs of humanity, sleeping in cubit ft. of space 60 cubic feet per human. For two days when the weather was pacific and the ocean was imitating a miller's pond, a contrivance of canvass was erected, but only when a spokesman of a deputation of a party of Dubbs protested against the thickness of the carbonic gas.

Now permanent ventilators cost dollars even to be erected in an old steamship. The cowelhead of a ventilator is the big hood that catches the air, and can be turned from the wind during stormy weather, but will always create a certain amount of suction to free "between-decks" of foul air. Foul air forms where coal is stored, and hemp, etc. Many times have spontaneous combustions occurred and many times have ships been posted as missing at Lloyd's foul air. Human beings consume oxygen to sustain life, and create carbonic gas.

Therefore, f. if ''K MELNOTTE BTAPLETON in a large ice box, not a refrigerator. The few tons of ice purchased at Seattle could maintain no even temperature, but just keep the food cold. The vessel's round trip occupied a month, and the food during that time and under those conditions decomposed, causing numerous cases of ptomaine poisoning among the steerage passengers. Chicken too far gone to be served to first-class passengers was handed down as a treat to the lower deck.

The Alaskan roughneck has been toughened by many hard experiences, and with a dose of epsom salts he was generally able to recover. Language fails in any attempt to describe the.