Then there was an old father, Macdougal, who had had three sons. One died of smallpox, and one was killed in a steel mill. The third was a railroad engineer. On the night of March 13, 1907, he was taking a heavy freight across a bridge at Deer Creek, Harmarsville. The creek was high and the pier gave way; the engine and first cars went crashing into the water below, carrying three men to death. The bodies of the fireman and conductor were recovered next day, but young Macdougal, the engineer, was never found. They say the old man's hair turned white in twenty-four hours, and that he can still be found on fair days walking along the banks of the creek, looking for his son. But for the most part mothers and fathers do not lose their hold on things. Their lives go on as before. You can know perhaps only from a weary sadness in the mother's eyes that the light of their lives has gone out.
Death does not always mean sorrow, and these working people, it seems to me, feel no pressure of convention upon them to appear sorrowful when they are not. But where affection is strong and love is deep, tragedies are as real with them as with any people I have known.
Wherever love is found there is the chance of grief; there is potential tragedy. And it is in poor families, I think, that one finds the most close and lasting affection.
So often, in looking up a fatal accident case, I would come upon an intimate and devoted family group. The case of Will Gordon, for instance,--there was a holiday drama I shall not soon forget. The Gordon family was a large one. Father and mother were living, and three working sons lived at home, besides four younger children. Then there were two married daughters, who lived near by and kept in close touch with the family. Will, the oldest son, although he was twenty-eight, was the greatest "home boy" of them all. He still handed every pay envelope over to his mother, unopened, as he had done when a child. His working life had been varied. First he tried the railroad, but he was slight, and the work was too much for him. Then for a while he did river work with one of his younger brothers who was on a government job. But in this he soon developed a chronic cough, and his mother was afraid of consumption. So finally he got a job with the Pressed Steel Car Company, as a pipe fitter's helper. Here the work was lighter and seemed to agree with him. Every two weeks he brought home twenty-five dollars and handed it over to his mother. Meanwhile his father, who was fifty, had taken a job at the Oil Refinery, firing boilers at night.