the superannuated and forgotten pilots in the Mississippi Valley.
They came from farms, they came from interior villages, they came
from everywhere. They came on crutches, on drays, in ambulances,–
any way, so they got there. They paid in their twelve dollars,
and straightway began to draw out twenty-five dollars a month,
and calculate their burial bills.
By and by, all the useless, helpless pilots, and a dozen first-class ones,
were in the association, and nine-tenths of the best pilots out of it
and laughing at it. It was the laughing-stock of the whole river.
Everybody joked about the by-law requiring members to pay ten per cent.
of their wages, every month, into the treasury for the support
of the association, whereas all the members were outcast and tabooed,
and no one would employ them. Everybody was derisively grateful
to the association for taking all the worthless pilots out of the way
and leaving the whole field to the excellent and the deserving;
and everybody was not only jocularly grateful for that, but for a
result which naturally followed, namely, the gradual advance of wages
as the busy season approached. Wages had gone up from the low figure
of one hundred dollars a month to one hundred and twenty-five, and in
some cases to one hundred and fifty; and it was great fun to enlarge
upon the fact that this charming thing had been accomplished by a body
of men not one of whom received a particle of benefit from it.
Some of the jokers used to call at the association rooms and have
a good time chaffing the members and offering them the charity
of taking them as steersmen for a trip, so that they could see what
the forgotten river looked like. However, the association was content;
or at least it gave no sign to the contrary. Now and then it
captured a pilot who was ‘out of luck,’ and added him to its list;
and these later additions were very valuable, for they were good pilots;
the incompetent ones had all been absorbed before. As business freshened,
wages climbed gradually up to two hundred and fifty dollars–
the association figure–and became firmly fixed there; and still
without benefiting a member of that body, for no member was hired.
The hilarity at the association’s expense burst all bounds, now.
There was no end to the fun which that poor martyr had to
put up with.
However, it is a long lane that has no turning. Winter approached,
business doubled and trebled, and an avalanche of Missouri,
Illinois and Upper Mississippi River boats came pouring down
to take a chance in the New Orleans trade. All of a sudden
pilots were in great demand, and were correspondingly scarce.
The time for revenge was come. It was a bitter pill to have to
accept association pilots at last, yet captains and owners agreed
that there was no other way. But none of these outcasts offered!
So there was a still bitterer pill to be swallowed:
they must be sought out and asked for their services.
Captain —- was the first man who found it necessary to take
the dose, and he had been the loudest derider of the organization.
He hunted up one of the best of the association pilots and said–
‘Well, you boys have rather got the best of us for a
little while, so I’ll give in with as good a grace as I can.
I’ve come to hire you; get your trunk aboard right away.
I want to leave at twelve o’clock.’
‘I don’t know about that. Who is your other pilot?’
‘I’ve got I. S—-. Why?’
‘I can’t go with him. He don’t belong to the association.’
‘What!’
‘It’s so.’
‘Do you mean to tell me that you won’t turn a wheel with one of the very best
and oldest pilots on the river because he don’t belong to your association?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Well, if this isn’t putting on airs! I supposed I was doing you
a benevolence; but I begin to think that I am the party that wants
a favor done. Are you acting under a law of the concern?’
‘Yes.’
‘Show it to me.’