CSotD: Cartoon classic: Occupying Shantytown
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J.R. Williams' "Out Our Way" was a daily panel with a number of themes, including family comedy, sibling rivalry, factory doings and events on a ranch out west. Williams had worked both in a factory and on a ranch and he'd evidently once been a little boy, judging from how well he depicted little boys.
It's hard to say just when the segment called "Born Thirty Years Too Soon" was set, but it was a time of shoe buttons, coal scuttles and either horses and carriages or cars that needed a crank to start. Given that the panel started in 1922, it seems that the time for that topic froze from the start. (Note that this panel is from 1952, making it more like "Born Half a Century Too Soon.")
Williams had an affectionate sense of humor and, while he loved to poke fun at the inconsistencies people live by, it was clear that he genuinely enjoyed life and liked people. He also had a sentimental side, and was pleased to offer the occasional heart-warmer like this.
One of the chores of poverty was looking for coal along the railroad tracks or at delivery sites where a bit of spillage might occur outside the gates. How often sympathetic railroad workers made the task easier I don't know, but I'm sure it happened occasionally, since Williams depicted life as it was.
Where coal was mined, the poor would go to the slate bank where the rock was dumped that was hauled out along with the coal, looking for the chunks of coal that had been accidentally discarded. Here's a song of the Pennsylvania coal fields that we used to sing in my Irish band.
(The Shoofly and Furnace were mines. In 1871, the Furnace went belly up and things were doing poorly enough over at the Shoofly that they were laying off miners, not hiring.)
As I went a-walking one fine summer's morning,
It was down by the Furnace I chanced for to stroll.
I spied an old lady, I'd swear she was eighty,
At the foot of the slate bank, she was rooting for coal;
And as I drew near her she sat on her haunches
To fill up her scuttle she then did begin
To herself she was singing this mournful ditty,
And these are the words the old lady did sing:
For it's Patrick, God help us, I'm nearly distracted,
For down in the Shoofly they've cut a bad vein;
Likewise they've condemned the old slope at the Furnace,
And all me fine neighbors must leave me again.
'Twas only last evenin' that I asked my Johnny
To tell me the reason the Furnace gave o'er.
He told me the company had spent eighty thousand,
And finding no prospects they'd spend no more.
And as for Michael Rooney, l owe him some money,
Likewise Patrick Kearns, l owe him some more;
And as for John Eagan, I scarce see his wagon,
But I think of the debt that l owe in his store.
But if God spares me children until the next summer,
Instead of a burden, they will be a gain;
And out of their earnin's I'll save an odd dollar,
And build a snug home at the 'Foot of the Plane.'
Then rolling in riches, in silks and in satin,
I ne'er shall forget the days I was poor,
And likewise the neighbors that stood by my children,
Kept want and starvation away from me door."
For it's Patrick, God help us, I'm nearly distracted,
For down in the Shoofly they've cut a bad vein;
Likewise they've condemned the old slope at the Furnace,
And all me fine neighbors must leave me again.
For anyone interested in more songs of the Pennsylvania coal mines, here's a paper from the Library of Congress that includes a slightly different version of the Shoofly plus several others.
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