The Boss's Boy

by Roy F. Chandler

  The old fighter on his right said, "I would close my eyes if I were you."

  Not understanding, Boleski asked, "What?"

  Then he saw the men at the kettle dip long-poled swabs into the bucket and bring them out soaked in something evil. The smell reached him. Pine? It was pine that clogged his nostrils and melted all hope. Boleski knew what was about to happen. He had heard of it, and he had considered its use up in the coalfields, but it was an awful punishment, and now . . . now he was about to experience it.

  The swab men stepped close, and one moved out of his view behind him. The man in front slapped his pitch soaked swab up under Boleski's chin, and the heat and stickiness of the heated pine pitch seemed to shrivel his skin. The heat was not boiling, but it felt as if it were.

  The pitch flowed downward and across his chest sticking as it traveled, but before Boleski could judge how heavily he was being coated, the man behind flopped his pitch swab onto Boleski's head, and the Organizer understood why he had been advised to close his eyes. The pitch was searingly hot, and the men wielding their terrible mops were unmerciful.

  Boleski howled in anguish and thrashed frantically. Other willing helpers reinforced the men holding his wrists. The swabs were returned to the cauldron for redipping, and back they came to add misery in a sticky coating that burned like liquid fire.

  Finally the swabbers stopped, and Boleski dared to open his eyes. His face had been spared, as had his hands. Otherwise, he was a mass of rapidly cooling pine pitch that would resist removal like skin itself.

  Men stepped forward with handfuls of something Boleski could not make out. When they hurled their loads onto him, Boleski knew, and believed he should have expected it—feathers and perhaps goose down. The feathery mass coated him, sticking to the pitch as if it had grown there.

  The ring of tormentors stood silently, but the men holding his wrists stepped away, and Matt Miller again appeared in his view.

  Matt's words were few. "Get out of Perry County, Boleski, and never return."

  Miller and his helpers gave him their backs as they walked away toward Duncannon.

  The Miller Men circling him were not as generous. They voiced their threats and promises of death if he was seen again in Miller country. They said that they knew him and would never forget what he looked like. They, too, ordered him away, and Boleski began to totter in the direction of the canal docks.

  Someone urged him faster, and a stone bounced from his back. Panic struck Boleski. These men were willing to kill him right now, and Miller had walked away leaving them free to do as they wished. He broke into a frantic if wobbling run and left the clearing behind.

  Matt listened to the shouting and threatening coming from the clearing. He asked, "Do you think we've convinced him, Mickey?"

  "Convinced him? Matt we just convinced every bad guy in Pennsylvania to avoid Perry County." Mickey laughed, "Once this word gets around, I doubt anyone in the whole county ever drinks too much or hits his wife."

  China said, "I hope someone will tell Boleski not to scrub too hard removing that pitch. Turpentine can help, but not much else will. He will wear that stuff for weeks until his skin just naturally lets it go."

  McFee said, "When it comes to doing miserable things to people, you are the master, China. I would have just licked him good, maybe broken up his face a bit, but that hot pitch treatment was the perfect answer. Nobody would ever face that a second time. Boleski will never approach the county line."

  They walked in silence, each deep in his thoughts. Matt's mind had moved on. He had his forthcoming marriage to ponder, and the need for bricks to be ready by spring when he would build their home. The potter who would run the brick factory was also interested in producing and selling his pottery. Miller Pottery, as McFee had suggested? Why not? Business was business.

  Then there were the stump pullers. He expected to have teams pulling stumps for as long as he lived. He expected that he had better corner that market before others jumped in on him. Once Cameron's designs had proven themselves, he would have more pullers made. They would own the molds for casting the tripods and only the turning screws would be expensive. Matt figured on.

  China Smith marveled at how the boy he helped grow to manhood took hold. Young Matt was willing to try anything sensible. He had turned over the old mill, and they both prospered from the transfer. China's new boat would be the fastest packet to ever hit a canal, and Matt was co-owner. They had already contracted for replacement towing teams all the way up past Lock Haven. On the other hand, there was the option of carrying fresh teams along on the fast boat and swapping horses when animals tired.

  Matt planned to station the lean and swift packet in Harrisburg, and China expected that he had better begin design on another boat. When Matt Miller found a good thing, he was prone to run with it.

  Mickey McFee strode in contentment. He walked beside a boss he could like and admire. He had a job anyone would envy. With Matt Miller running things there would always be interesting work—and other activities. McFee grinned inside as he thought back on the humiliation of Boleski and his thugs.

  He had hoped that he and Matt might punch holes in the Organizers the way they had the first time, but Pavlovic had not come, and Old Ben had reported that the man was peeing blood. The pine pitch was better, anyway.

  Matt Miller had heard Ben's report, so he must have been impressed by Mickey McFee's punch. McFee had noted that Matt was wearing his fighting gloves while they had waited in the clearing. So had Mickey—just in case.

  For as long as he lived, Boleski would wear the scar from Matt's punch in the face. Matt Miller could hit, too.

  Mickey McFee couldn't help wondering—if silently—just how The Irish Hurricane and Matt Miller would come out going toe to toe.

  Mickey would bet his last dollar that the Boss's Boy was wondering the same.

  The End

  The Canals

  Although The Boss's Boy is not a book about canals, those wonderful Pennsylvania waterways are engaged within the story and readers may wish to know more about them.

  Oddly, interesting construction details and even stories about canaling days (particularly on the Juniata Branch) are difficult to find. Research New York's Erie Canal and information flows like water. Yet, the Pennsylvania system, which was vastly more extensive and a greater engineering feat, receives little literary attention.

  I have often confessed that I, as an author, rarely conduct original research. My writing relies on what I can extract from what others have written or have told me.

  Operating secondhand, as I do, offers opportunities to make inglorious errors of serious importance, and, as we all know, it is almost impossible to repeat a story exactly the same even twice in a row. Therefore, what I now record as fact may not actually be the final word, but the maps and the details should give anyone less dedicated than a canal scholar a pretty clear picture of the Pennsylvania canal system. I wish that I had had at hand all that I now record.

  It would be discouraging to list all of the digging and scratching I went through to discover how little I knew about the canals—waterways that I have admired since I was a wee lad growing up on the canal banks at Lewisburg.

  Canals were built along both the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers. The entire canal system was built, by hand labor, between 1827 and about 1834. The "about" got in there because when a canal was completely-completed depended on who judged and reported on which was the final shovel-full removed or the last stone laid.

  The canals were built to move inland goods to cities along large rivers, bays, and oceans. We, who enjoy easy road travel, must remember that before pavement, roads and pikes were simply awful. Use of any road in the world was a miserable experience. The only fact making such travel tolerable was that there was nothing better.

  The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had two major cities—Philadelphia in the east, and Pittsburgh in the west. All produce and manufacturing west of the Allegheny Mountains (tha
t split the state into halves) went down the Ohio River and was lost to Pennsylvania use and profit.

  If canals could join the cities, the entire state would profit via shipping back and forth. In those pre-industrial revolution days there were no giant corporations (like the railroads that came later) that could undertake canal building efforts of such magnitude. So, the Commonwealth chose to pay the costs, to design and build, and to operate the complex waterways. Their payback (a modern term) would come from tolls, taxes, and increased revenues from more business.

  The first section of the canal transportation system was actually a railroad (using horses to pull the cars) between Philadelphia and Columbia on the Susquehanna River. That sixty-plus mile long railroad dramatically reduced the shipping of goods on down to Baltimore and beyond Pennsylvania use.

  Note: A wagon on rails could move about five times the weight as the same wagon could on a road—and in about one half the time.

  In that era, serious river traffic could occur only during high water. The Susquehanna was a shallow and obstacle-filled river, and only in the spring could steady shipping be accomplished. River shipment (due to sinkings and groundings) resulted in lost boats and destroyed cargoes almost as often as safe arrivals. Good canals could avoid most of those misfortunes.

  Canals began at Columbia and stayed on the east side of the Susquehanna all the way north to Clark's Ferry—Dauphin County to the east and Perry County to the west.

  At Clark's Ferry (earlier called Green's Ferry) the canal crossed the river into Perry County and separated into two canals. One branch went north on the west side of the Susquehanna, and the other branch traveled northwest along the south (west) side of the Juniata River.

  The Susquehanna branch was important to Perry County and towns such as New Buffalo and Liverpool were built along its route. Those somnolent villages were, in canal days, thriving market ports with six canal locks within Perry County, and—believe it or not—Liverpool boasted two canal boat building and repair yards.

  The second canal boat built and launched west of the Susquehanna River came from Liverpool (the first was built and floated at Millerstown on the Juniata Branch).

  The Juniata River splits Perry County, and following that river's rush from the Allegheny Mountains to the Susquehanna River, the canal opened interior Pennsylvania commerce to the outside world.

  When the Juniata Section of the canal reached the Allegheny Mountains, an engineering feat deemed impossible by some was accomplished with barely an eye-blink.

  A series of short, steeply rising railroads were built leading up the otherwise impossible mountainside. A boat with its load intact was floated onto a submerged rail car. Car and boat were hauled to the railroad's highest point by use of a steam engine implanted near that high spot. The boat-bearing car was then transferred via simple shunting and switching onto a parallel railroad that went higher on the mountain using a second steam engine at that road's summit. So the rail car with the boat as cargo went over the mountain and descended the same way on the west. Thereafter, the canal resumed its downstream flow all the way to Pittsburgh.

  Describing the canal routes is not the same as digging them, and the labor of those unnamed multitudes of Irish, German, Swede, Polish and—who knows who else—laborers would alone be a tale worth recording.

  Canal workers labored twelve-hour days, six days a week. Their pay varied from seventy cents a day to eighty-five cents. Other benefits of any kind were unheard of!

  A workman was expected to move 15 cubic yards of dirt each day and/or excavate three linear feet of canal each day.

  A contractor (like Matt Miller) bidding on canal work was offered ten cents per cubic yard of earth removed and forty-five cents per cubic yard for solid rock removal.

  Put another way, a worker was paid seventy cents for removing 15 cubic yards and the contractor—who provided and paid the worker—was paid one dollar and fifty cents for the work.

  There was a surplus of workers, and every laborer was a recent immigrant battling to gain a foothold in his new land and to inch forward, just a little, in material possessions.

  One might think that payment of seventy cents a day was miserly, and it was. Bosses existed (and still do) to make money, not to perform social services. If laborers could be hired for seventy cents, why would they be offered more?

  As this is written, the United States is faced with illegal immigration by hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens who will labor at wages far below the demands of American workers. Should businesses pay them more?

  Historians will examine labor parallels between the earlier 1800's and our early twenty-first century. I will suggest only that hiring cheaply is part of our capitalist system, and that, in the long view, cheap labor has worked well for the country and for almost everyone passing through or assimilated by the system. But, there are other, less easily measured, social costs, and, if empowered, I would put an end to all illegal immigration using any means possible!

  Low wages can only be maintained where goods are also cheap. As examples, of costs during the canal building era, a gallon of Applejack (brandy) cost twenty-five cents, as did a gallon of Blackstrap, a mix of rum and molasses. A glass of either popular drink cost three cents.

  Here is an interesting price that might prove more comparable. A 2" x 12" plank cost four cents per running foot. Almost all of that cost lay in the sawing or hewing of the plank, which was not accomplished as conveniently as it is today. Today (May 2006), a similar 2" x 12" plank would cost one dollar and eighty-eight cents per running foot.

  Household goods, flour, meat, cheese, beer, and such things as salt and fish could be shipped via canal for two cents a ton per mile.

  Coal and iron shipped at one cent per ton per mile, and sand and clay cost three-fourths of a cent per shipped ton.

  A packet boat hauling passengers was charged twenty-five cents a canal mile. A passenger aboard the packet paid a toll of a half-cent a mile.

  A canal boat captain was paid about sixty dollars a month, but if he provided all of his help, his horses and their feed, etc, he received two hundred and twenty dollars a month. A steersman on a boat made twenty-five dollars, a cook made twenty dollars, and a driver (of the animals on the towpath) was paid ten dollars per month.

  A short note about these drivers is in order. Most drivers were boys. They worked six-hour days without breaks except for halts at locks, farmer's landings, or to water or feed the animals.

  During those six hours, a boat might travel ten miles if heavily loaded or as much as eighteen miles if running light. If using one and two horse teams, the drivers walked. If four horse teams were hitched, a driver sometimes was allowed to ride the last horse.

  I note here that more than a few canal boats carried their relief teams (as many as six horses) along on the boat. It was found to be more certain and often cheaper to carry teams than arranging for them en route. Carried horses could be swapped with working animals at any point, which could prove advantageous as an animal tired.

  In the census of 1830, Pennsylvania had four hundred and three slaves. Some of those slaves were worked as cooks on canal boats, and some free Negroes were also employed as cooks.

  I use the term "Mucker" in this book. Mucker was a disparaging name for someone who dug the accumulated muck from canal bottoms usually while they were drained during winter and before reopening in the spring. Mucking was a bottom- paying job. Imagine the filth that drained from fields, canal-side villages, and all that was dumped from the boats (garbage and sewage). When carbide lamps came into use, ashes from the lamps were dumped into canals to help reduce the growth of weeds. It worked but, of course, it killed all of the fish.

  One might wonder how busy the canals actually were. A recorded example is that in one season (usually 36 weeks) thirty-six hundred boats arrived at Huntington from the east. Persons living along the canals noted that, "A boat hardly got out of sight before another hove into view."

  A boat ev
ery twenty minutes was recorded. That spacing was often determined by the time required to cycle and pass through a one-boat lock.

  Canal shapes are discussed within this book, but more can be said about the boats themselves. As examples, it should be pointed out that square-ended boats and rafts were common, and they could be brutal to the canal banks. To reduce damage by all boats, a speed limit of four miles per hour was established.

  Speeders could receive a ten-dollar fine. However (there is always a however where speeding is concerned), publications note that fast packets reached eight miles per hour. Packets carrying passengers (their primary function) traveled eighty to one hundred miles per day where a freight boat might make twenty-five.

  Interesting rules of the canal era include that every boat was required to have a light on its bow at night. Square-ended boats and rafts were supposed to have curved platforms added to their bows to keep from damaging canal banks with their sharp corners.

  As "sharp" is mentioned, the law required every decked boat had to have a knife-edged instrument fixed to the bow (or stern) to cut a towrope that might inadvertently pass over the boat. A towrope could virtually behead someone caught by it, or a rope could destroy structures above the deck—such as cabins. A caught towrope could also injure the pulling animals, and horses were known to have been pulled from a towpath into the water by a caught rope and a boat's momentum.

  It is interesting to know that packet boats were scheduled to travel from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia in four days. The actuality might be six days. Canal breaks, bad weather, and delays at the inclined-plane railroads and at ordinary locks were to be expected.

  Canal boats were not all eighty and ninety-foot long monsters, and most boats were under fifty feet in length. Despite ninety-foot long locks, there were even a few one hundred-foot long boats that managed to pass through. How, one could fairly wonder, could that be done?