that an ocean voyage of less than four thousand miles, even by sailing vessel, could last that long, but there are plenty of cases on record where it has taken between eight and twelve weeks, owing to storms and head winds. In such cases the privations and sufferings of the passengers through lack of sufficient food and water, must have been horrible.
Before I go any farther I must explain that at the time of our departure from Europe I was only five years old, and that my recollections of my first home are very faint indeed, I suppose on account of their being so commonplace. But our long journey marked a new era in my life, and some of our experiences then are still as vivid in my mind as though they had happened last week. Our final destination was Milwaukee, Wis., where my father’s brother with his family had preceded us five months before. We left New York for Buffalo, via Albany, on the New York Central railway, and come to think of it now, it strikes me that the management of that road labored under the impression that emigrants, negroes and cattle were in the same class, for we rode in common box cars furnished with rude plank benches without any backs, and a mere excuse for toilet necessities. The track was so terribly rough and the jolting so terrific that the children, and even the adult passengers, would fall off of those miserable benches; so by the time we reached Buffalo we were all sore and raw.
From Buffalo to Detroit we traveled by side-wheel steamer, and while on that trip I saw deck hands rolling barrels of something alternately from one side of the deck to the other. All this was extremely puzzling to me at that time, and it was nearly twenty years later, on Lake Michigan, when I saw the same performance taking place, that it dawned on my mind that the object was to keep the boat on a level so both paddle wheels would dip the same depth into the water. The journey from Detroit to Milwaukee by rail was without incident, except that on the Northwestern railway, between Chicago and Milwaukee, we rode at great speed in first-class new passenger coaches, which in contrast to the New York Central cattle cars looked and felt palatial indeed.
We arrived in Milwaukee the last of October, just before President Buchanan’s election, with times and trade exceedingly dull and stagnant. The country then was on a “free trade” and “hard money” basis, and there seemed to be mighty little of the latter in circulation, because even if a person was lucky enough to secure employment the wages were miserably low and the workingman was expected to trade out most of his earnings. I have heard my parents say that there were weeks and weeks when my father’s wage averaged less than five dollars per week, but we lived through it all because my mother was an exceedingly economical and hardworking housewife. Recalling the money of that period, a copper cent was almost as large as a half dollar now; then there were silver three-cent pieces, half dimes, dimes, quarters and half dollars, and very probably a dollar, but I do not recall ever seeing one. The silver coins were about the same size as now. As for the gold coin, there was the gold dollar, so diminutive as to be a mere curiosity, the quarter eagle, half eagle, eagle and double eagle.
Shortly before the Civil War we had the wildcat banking era, the most vicious and irresponsible money system this country was ever cursed with, which impoverished and pauperized thousands of people. Luckily just as the great war broke, and as if by magic, all coin vanished from circulation,
