Bean Lake, Missouri

The next stop was the railroad section gang at Bean Lake, Missouri. After doing intense, hard labor for two weeks, because of financial struggles for the railroad and the fact that Sandburg didn't have an address at the time, he wasn't paid for his work.

He writes:

My Irish boss, Fay Connors, hired me at a dollar and twenty-five cents a day and I was to pay him three dollars a week for board and room in his four-room one-story house thirty feet from the railroad tracks. I tamped ties several days from seven till noon, from one till six in the evening. On Sunday I washed my shirt and socks. At the end of two weeks, on a Sunday morning, I hopped a freight for Kansas City and left Boss Connors to collect for my board and room out of my paycheck. The rest of the pay was still owing and was never collected. If Connors did get it he couldn’t have sent it to me, as he didn’t know my address and I wasn’t expecting to have any address for weeks or months.

• Bean Lake, Missouri

  
  

  Listen to an audio narrative of Bean Lake, Missouri
  Audio Transcript

  The next stop was the railroad section gang at Bean Lake, Missouri. After doing intense, hard labor for two weeks, because of financial struggles for the railroad and the fact that Sandburg didn't have an address at the time, he wasn't paid for his work.

  He writes:

  My Irish boss, Fay Connors, hired me at a dollar and twenty-five cents a day and I was to pay him three dollars a week for board and room in his four-room one-story house thirty feet from the railroad tracks. I tamped ties several days from seven till noon, from one till six in the evening. On Sunday I washed my shirt and socks. At the end of two weeks, on a Sunday morning, I hopped a freight for Kansas City and left Boss Connors to collect for my board and room out of my paycheck. The rest of the pay was still owing and was never collected. If Connors did get it he couldn’t have sent it to me, as he didn’t know my address and I wasn’t expecting to have any address for weeks or months.