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Page 84 JOHN DUBOIS
This condition caused a serious drop in wages. Labor
went as low as 75c per day and usually did not exceed $1.00 per day,
and jobs were scarce at that price. A stone mason who had been
receiving from $4.00 to $5.00 per day in lining the tunnel at
Sabula, went to work as a moulder in John DuBois' Iron Works at
$1.12 per day. The day at that time was 6 A. M. to 6 P. M. On the
farm the farmer went out at daylight and mowed grass until six when
he had breakfast, and at 9 o'clock he had a lunch sent to his field.
Then he commenced to rake his hay, cut by hand. His day ended when
he could not see in the evening. In this day there were no
charitable people to provide breadlines, nor was there a benevolent
government with offices filled with scared politicians who went
crazy and devised all methods and schemes, by levying excessive
taxes on the people, to start "public improvements" to take up the
slack in labor, the result of which increased taxes. The economists
of that day had some sense and did not advocate three days a week
and short hours. They recognized the law of economics and in place
of the people crying and bemoaning their fate, they took hold of
what there was to do and did it with all their might, glad to have
an opportunity to earn their bread by honest work. True, they did
not have automobiles, radios, kitchen aides, movies, etc., and the
country had risen from the conditions prior to the Civil War, and
what had been considered luxuries prior to the war had become
necessities by 1874, just as the people now cry that what were
luxuries prior to the World War are now necessities. The difference
is that the people of that time "did not have their wishbone where
their backbone ought to be."
By 1876 one or two tanneries were built in the county
and hemlock became a commodity by which the owners of the despised
hemlock could sell the bark thereof. The owner of the land,
therefore, ruthlessly cut his hemlock for the bark. On an average it
required 2000 feet of timber to produce a cord of bark. This bark
was hauled as far as twenty miles to Curwensville where the producer
received $4.00 per cord, and the seller took most of the price of
this bark out of the "tannery store" owned by the tanning company.
One can realize what the wages were when it is known
that a crew of 3 men could cut about 6000 feet of hemlock timber and
peel it in a day, which meant three cords of bark. After the
cutting, the bark had to be skidded to the road and loaded on wagons
and hauled the twenty miles. One wagon would haul probably two tons
of bark, receiving at the end of the trip the $8.00 per load as
wages of the team-driver and men producing it. This might work out
about 75c per day for the men, with a like amount for the team. The
hemlock timber was left in the woods to rot. The evidence of this
can be seen in several localities of the county where the hemlock
trees have not all rotted up. Railroad ties had been salable upon
the advent of the railroad in 1869, and in Curwensville in 1875,
white oak railroad ties sold for 25c apiece. This same white oak
timber on the stump today would be worth more than five times what
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