The real old Hamilton
boys who left here fifty and sixty years ago, and in all that time never set
eyes on the old town, are dropping in one by one before they shuffle off this
mortal coil. We have had quite a number
coming back to what they supposed was the old time village at the Head of the
Lake and instead of rural roads and cow pastures they find a handsome city of
100,000, with over 400 large factories in place of four or five stove foundries,
a planning mill and two or three carriage shops. They rub their eyes as they look around. Everything has changed, even to the smart
looking policemen who are now pounding a beat on King street instead of good
old Peter Ferris, Donald Dawson, Sergeant McGlogan, Dick Powers, Chief Carruthers
and other French counts from Tipperary and Connaught, who were the guardian
angels of Hamilton away back 60 years ago.
And the old boys who have come back to the home of their boyhood show
some signs of increasing years; but what else can you expect from men who have
passed the allotted years of three score and 10? It was an old-time printer who wandered back
after many years of the wanderlust. Not that he has been tramping as a typo;
far from it! He is now living in a most
fashionable quarter of easy street, in Cleveland, Ohio, the home of John D.
Rockefeller, and while he does not count his millions, like John, he has to
have a new pair of shears every now and then to replace the old ones worn out
in clipping coupons. It is a glimpse of
sunshine to meet these old boys and know that prosperity has been loafing on
their doorsteps.
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Sydney W. Gilles was born in England in the
year 1846, and came to Hamilton in 1861 with his mother and the other children.
His father died in the old land. He was
a poet and a dreamer, and for many years was connected with the editorial
staffs of Dickens’ Household Words as a writer. Sydney remembers the great
author, having met him in the office of Household Words, and it is a pleasant
thought to him that his father was part of that magazine. Sydney had one brother, three years older
than himself, named Charles T. Gilles.
Both of them attended the Central school when it first opened with Dr.
Sangster as headmaster. Sydney Gilles,
or “Sid,” as he is better known to the old-timers, after graduating from school,
drifted into the Dundas Banner offices, a while after James Somerville became
the editor, chief typesetter and Washington hand pressman, and under that
master of the printers’ art Sid took his first lessons at the roller. His
Brother Charles also took a rudimentary course in the Banner, but finally learned
the book-binders art under Alexander Mars, whose son is yet in the business in
a shop on Rebecca street. When Sid had learned all that could be taught him by
Mr. Somerville, he started out on a pedestrian tour are, and footsore and weary
after his 5 miles of tramping, he landed in 1863, in the old Canada Christian Advocate,
then under the management of the Rev. George Abbs, with George Roberts as
foreman. Now, this old Muser has a
fellow feeling for any printer, be he boy or man, who ever worked in the Advocate
offices, for we drifted it into it in 1855, and served a couple of years at
$2.50 a week, and got our pay when the editor, the Rev. Gideon Shepard, was in
funds. It was a remarkable thing that in
those days, no matter how good a workman one was, a boy’s wages never got
beyond $2.50 or $3.00 a week. Well, it
may not have been so much out of the way after all, when first-class journeymen
got only $7.00 a week. It was not kill
1864, after the first printers union was organized, that a jump in the scale
was made to $9.00 a week, and every blessed one of them wanted to get married
and settle down to housekeeping. $9.00 a
week were not to be hooted at in those days, when one could rent a palatial
cottage for $3 a month in buy beefsteak at five cents a pound. But there was one drawback even in those
halcyon days; one was not always sure of getting his wages on Saturday night,
but had to take store orders instead. Well, Sid Gilles had a taste of those days in
the old Advocate, and getting tired of it, he hiked out to Buffalo and remained
there just long enough to raise a stake and try it elsewhere. He tried New Orleans and other large cities,
but he was not yet ready to settle down to a steady job. Those old printer boys had the wanderlust bad,
and they had to get it out of them before they were fit for anything
practical. During the civil war in the
United States said tried to enlist in the northern army, but they wouldn’t take
him because he was so long and thin that the quartermaster would never be able
to furnish a uniform that would fit him.
Unfortunate Sid! He might now be
drawing $30.00 a month pension for stopping rebel bullets. However, he does not need it, for fortune has
dealt kindly with him and given him an elegant retreat away up in the aristocratic
suburbs in Cleveland, on Easy street.
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After seening
all that part of the world bounded by the United States Sid settled down in
Troy New York and started a printing office of his own, taking his brother into
partnership. Sid had developed a love for horses, and having time on his hands,
he accepted the secretaryship of the driving park at Troy, which brought him
much money and lots of fun. This he held
on to for many years, his brother taking care of the print shop. One day he was in the city of New York, and
as he was walking along the street, he thought he saw a man ahead of them who
look like his old Dundas boss. He walked
quickly and passed him, and turning around he was convinced. Going up to Mr. Somerville he addressed him: “Hello,
Jim, how do you do! How is everybody in
Dundas?” Mr. Somerville put on a severe look and said to Sid: “ Young man, if
you think you are going to bunko me, you have struck the wrong person.” “That
is all right, Jim; but don’t you know Sid Gilles, who learned his trade in your
print shop and Dundas on the old banner?” Mr. Somerville began to get interested
now, and after asking Sid a few questions he was satisfied of his identity. They spent the afternoon together very
pleasantly, and had a hearty laugh at the idea of Mr. Somerville taking said for
a bunko steerer. Eight years ago Sydney
Gilles lost the best friend that man ever had, a loving wife, leaving two
daughters to mourn her death. His health
gave way shortly afterward. At that time
he was the secretary of the Cleveland writing park. Having accumulated enough money to provide
him with all the comforts and luxuries during his life, he retired from active
business, and now spends his days and in dreaming the happy hours away. He is in Hamilton, visiting his boyhood
friend, John C Bale, and they’re having a happy time bringing back to memory
the scenes of more than half a century ago.
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It is a
rare thing to find a French or German family in indigent circumstances. The average family will live on what an
American or Canadian family wastes.
Savings banks statistics are sometimes quoted to show the thrift of the
French people. There are more there are
more savings bank accounts in France and more small competences then in
America, and yet the wages earned by the French are far less in proportion. The national ideal in France is independence
at or beyond middle age; they look forward to the period of earned leisure. If a life of leisure beyond middle age may
not be more desirable than dying in the harness, but it is very comforting to
feel that you can quit work if you want to, and that you can keep the wolf from
the door. The habits of thrift make eventual independence possible and probable
serve to train the family to self-denial and to fortify its members against the
disaster of financial mischance. Those
who live up to the last dollar, and are anxiously waiting for the next paycheck
are always on the tightrope over a change, in momentary danger of losing their
foothold. The man who earns living wages
or more, yet spends it as fast, if not faster, than he earns it, is always on
the tightrope; while the men whose earning capacity a smaller, but whose
capacity for thrift is larger, is always sure of his footing. He may be sneered at for parsimonious habits,
but by the time he is middle aged he can point to his bank book as the best
evidence that his economical habits were not in vain. He who is foolish enough to boast that it is
better to spend one’s last dollar like a king and end up as a beggar, may live
to see the day when as a spendthrift he has no standing in the community. The patriotism of the Frenchman is a fine
example of sentiment for his country.
When you can buy a government bond and laid it aside, he feels that he
has become a partner in the government.
The young man or young woman who invests a small part of their earnings
every month in providing a government annuity for old age is a better Canadian for
their financial interest in the government.
When the city of Hamilton issued $100 bonds to sell to small investors,
it was teaching a lesson of thrift and economy to the wage earners. It takes patience and self-denial to lay by
the first $100, but the second one will come easier because we have learned to
do without many things that add not to our daily comfort. Those $100 bonds paid good interest, and were
a very desirable investment. There’s
never been a country in which the average man -meaning the man without
inherited wealth, without special educational equipment, without influence - had
a greater opportunity to get along than Canada offers. But the proportion of families whose budget
of expenses is well within the family income is not so large as it should
be. Hamilton began away back in the last
century with a population of poor men, who had to count the cost of raising a
family. Their boys profited by the
experience of the fathers, and with that native thrift incident to industry
have made for themselves homes and comparative independence. The prosperous ones had no money to invest in
the bar rooms or to bet on horse racing.
If our Canadian boys would only study the thrift of the French or the
German, they would become the richest and most independent people in the world,
not merely in the amount of money possessed per capita, but in the matter of
relief from hard work and want in old age.
It is an easy thing to sit down at a typewriter and draw beautified
pictures of what the economy will do, but it is hard to persuade the average
reader to do it.
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And the
here’s an object lesson for the study of those who believe that immorality and
whiskey can be controlled by law. One
night last week the body of an unfortunate woman was fished out of the Detroit
River. After a life spent in revelry,
drunkenness and following the profession of the harlot, she had just sense enough
left to take the fatal plunge and ended it all.
Poor Cecile! She was the daughter
of parents well-to-do, who gave her all the advantages of a higher education,
and music and an art. In her youth she
had the entrée of the cultured and wealthy society of Detroit. It was fashionable to sip wine, and as the
appetite grow, to drink it; and from the wine to stronger liquors. It took years to travel the course, but the
end was always in sight. She fell by the
wayside. From a happy home to the street
and then to the police station, Cecile was an educated wreck who sank below her
scarlet sisters to negro dives. They
travel the road quickly once they get into line. Hearts that had been made sick by her
profligate course reached out arms of affection and saved her from a pauper’s
grave. Of what avail was the law in the
police court and the jail! Prayers could
not save her, for broken-hearted parents had tried that remedy when all else
had failed. Fining her or committing her
to jail had no effect. To pay her fine
she returned to her avocation in the street.
And her case is only one without number.
Magistrate Jelfs or any member of the police department will tell you
that a fine or jail sentence is of no avail; the unfortunates the Ceciles are
back again in a few days. They are outcasts
in society, and their only thought is whiskey to drown their sorrow in
disgrace. In time they had no home
except the jail, and when one sentence has been served, they go back in the
street to be arrested again. Why not
provide a home, under restraint, instead of the fin or the jail for those
unfortunates? The appetite for strong
drink or terrible lives can never be checked by law. We license men to make drunkards and then
punish the man or woman who gets drunk.
The young girls who parade the streets at night cannot always remain
virtuous. Some scoundrel is ready to
pounce upon them at the opportune moment. Ponder on the sad end of the once accomplished
Cecile!
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