Working-Class Family Life 489spent most of their income on food; others saved
substantial sums even when earning no more than
$400 or $500 a year. Family incomes varied greatly
among workers who received similar hourly wages,
depending on the steadiness of employment and on
the number of family members holding jobs.
Consider the cases of two Illinois coal miners,
each a decent, hardworking union man with a large
family, earning $1.50 a day in 1883. One was out of
work nearly half the year; his income in 1883 was
only $250. He, his wife, and their five children, ages
three to nineteen, lived in a two-room tenement.
They existed almost exclusively on a diet of bread and
salt meat. Nevertheless, as an investigator reported,
their home was neat and clean and three of the chil-
dren were attending school.
The other miner, father of four children,
worked full time and brought home $420 in 1883.
He owned a six-room house and an acre of land,
where the family raised vegetables. Their food bill
for the year was more than ten times that of the
family just described. These two solid families were
probably similar in social attitudes and perhaps in
political loyalties; but they had very different stan-
dards of living.
The cases of two families headed by railroad
brakemen provide a different variation. One man
brought home only $360 to house and feed a wife
and eight children. Here is the report of a state offi-
cial who interviewed the family: “Clothes ragged,
children half-dressed and dirty. They all sleep in one
room regardless of sex.... The entire concern is as
wretched as could be imagined. Father is shiftless....
Wife is without ambition or industry.”
The other brakeman and his wife had only two
children, and he earned $484 in 1883. They owned a
well-furnished house, kept a cow, and raised vegeta-
bles for home consumption. Although they were far
from rich, they managed to put aside enough for
insurance, reading matter, and a few small luxuries.A mother died, a father lost his leg—such calamities shattered poor urban families. Orphaned street urchins formed roving bands that
pilfered food and picked the pockets of the well-to-do. Rather than put such children in orphanages, the Children’s Aid Society in New York
sent them to live with, and work for, farming families. From the 1850s until 1929, over 200,000 orphans were put on trains such as this one
and sent to the West.