Editor’s Note: The following text is a verbatim transcription of an article featuring stories by Captain William O. Benson (1911-1986). Beginning in 1971, Benson, a retired tugboat captain, reminisced about his 40 years on the Hudson River in a regular column for the Kingston (NY) Freeman’s Sunday Tempo magazine. Captain Benson's articles were compiled and transcribed by HRMM volunteers Carl and Joan Mayer. See more of Captain Benson’s articles here. This article was originally published December 16, 1973.

​In today’s jet age of airplane travel, and human nature being what it is, some people seem to take a perverse delight in recounting incidents where their flight — because of adverse weather conditions — was diverted to an airport other than that of their original destination, or now of delays encountered because of the energy crisis.  In the simpler age of steamboat travel, there were also on occasion unforeseen delays.
​ 
In that long ago era before the advent of the automobile and the airplane, virtually every trip of more than a few miles was made either by railroad or, if the destination was adjacent to navigable water, by steamboat.  Travel by steamboat was generally leisurely and delightful.  However, you always didn’t get to where you were going when you expected to. 

One such incident was related to me years ago by Captain Ed Van Woert of the Cornell tugboat “G. C. Adams.” In December 1913, Captain Van Woert had to go to New York to testify in a lawsuit being held there pertaining to damage to a schooner that occurred while being landed at Hudson some months before.  He thought he would take his wife along for the trip.

On this particular day, Captain Ed left the ‘‘Adams” at Athens and went home to get ready.  That evening, he and his wife boarded the steamer “Onteora” of the Catskill Evening Line at Athens, expecting to be in New York the following morning. 

After going aboard the “Onteora” and getting their stateroom, they had a leisurely supper in the steamer’s dining room. 

After eating, Captain Ed said to his wife, “I guess I'll go up in the pilot house awhile and talk to my friend the pilot.”’ At this point, the “Onty” was approaching the landing at Cheviot and a snow storm had set in. 

On leaving Cheviot, the "Onteora" headed for County Island to get over in the main channel.  The snow storm had increased in intensity and visibility had decreased almost to zero.  The pilot held her on the west course a little bit too long and she went hard aground just north of County Island, with her bow in about five feet of water and her stern in deep water.  They backed and backed, but she wouldn’t come off.

The tide was falling and at daybreak the next morning the "Onteora" was still hard aground.  Captain Van Woert and his wife got off in a small boat and after being rowed to shore, walked through two feet of snow to the nearest railroad station to catch a train for New York.  The “Onteora” got herself off on the next high tide and was back on her run — although nearly 12 hours late — none the worse for her mishap.

Another incident that took place about the same period, although this time during the summer, was related to me by my old friend George W. Murdock, an old time Hudson River steamboat engineer who died at his home in Ponckhockie in 1940, well into his eighties. 

On a Saturday summer’s afternoon, Mr. Murdock boarded the “William F. Romer” at her New York pier for the run to Kingston.  At that time, the “Romer" of the New York to Rondout night line regularly would leave New York on Saturday in the early afternoon and arrive at Rondout in the early evening.  Mr. Murdock’s brother-in-law, Joel Rightmyer of Ponckhockie, was the “Romer's" pilot.  On this particular trip, the “Romer” was bucking a strong ebb tide from the time she left her New York pier.

The wind, like it so often does during the summer, was blowing straight up river out of the south.  Worse yet, what breeze there was was blowing at about the same velocity as the “Romer’s" speed through the water, so that while underway the “Romer’s” flags hung limp on their poles.  Underway, it was hot, humid, virtually airless and, because of the strong ebb tide, the steamer was running later and later with each passing hour. 

Past the Palisades and up through Tappan Zee and Haverstraw Bay, the “Romer” plodded her way up river.  It wasn’t much of a day for steamboating.  Finally, the "Romer" reached the Hudson Highlands and as she approached the landing at West Point, Mr. Murdock noticed a West Shore passenger train chuffing away from Highland Falls.  He decided to leave the steamer and catch the train for the rest of his trip to Rondout,

As he was leaving the steamboat, Mr. Murdock said to his brother-in-law, “Joel, I don’t think you'll get to Kingston by nightfall." Replied Pilot Rightmyer, “Well, George, if we don’t get there today, we’ll get there tomorrow.”

Mr. Murdock boarded the train at West Point, thinking he’d get home well ahead of the steamer.  However, as luck would have it, there was a freight train stuck on the West Park hill where the tracks make their incline from the river and head inland.  His train, on the same track as the freight, stood on the tracks for what seemed like an eternity in the hot summer air. 

Finally another locomotive was sent down from Kingston and got the freight train ahead moving.  Eventually, Mr. Murdock got to Kingston and took the trolley car for Rondout.  As he was walking up Abruyn Street to his home in Ponckhockie, he glanced over his shoulder — just in time to see the top deck of the “William F. Romer” gliding past on her way in Rondout Creek to her berth on Ferry Street!
​
During the 1950’s the Cunard Line had a great slogan — “Getting there is half the fun.”  Generally it was.  Sometimes, though, as it is in all forms of travel, the fraction was wrong.

​If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!​​

​An original song by Melissa Holland. Performed by Melissa Holland (keyboard and vocals) with photography by Paul Hewitt. Melissa and Paul live in Beacon, New York on the Hudson River. Beacon was Pete Seeger's home town, and he was dedicated to revitalizing the Hudson after it had been badly contaminated by pollution. Melissa Holland performed regularly with Pete Seeger, and she performs regularly at the Hudson Valley Folk Guild.

THE HUDSON RIVER FLOWS - LYRICS

​We know the Hudson River flows
North and South, fast and slow
We know the Hudson River flows
She’s alive and well today

Years ago, they said she was dead
But people got together and they used their heads
Some said the future looked grim
But they dove right in

We know the Hudson River flows
North and South, fast and slow
We know the Hudson River flows
She’s alive and well today

Working, planning, side by side
Before too long they turned the tide
But the job is never done
It goes on and on

We know the Hudson River flows
North and South, fast and slow
We know the Hudson River flows
She’s alive and well today

Put those big old frackers down
Leave the gas underground
There’s power sources we’ve ignored.
That we can explore.

If we want her to stay
Education is the way
Don’t give up
Stand your ground and pass the torch on down.

We know the Hudson River flows
North and South, fast and slow
We know the Hudson River flows
She’s alive and well today
She’s alive and well today
She’s alive and well today

​Thanks to HRMM volunteer Mark Heller for sharing his knowledge of Hudson River music history for this series.​

The Ashokan Reservoir was built between 1907 and 1915 to supply water to New York City. The flooding of twelve communities and thousands of acres of farmland sparked long-lasting controversy. The last of the land claims were settled in 1940. Two thousand residents were moved, some of the communities were relocated, others were flooded.  The dam was constructed with Rosendale cement. Today trails along the Reservoir provide pleasant walking and biking opportunities.

In 1905 the New York State Legislature enacted legislation to create the New York City Board of Water Supply.  The Board had the authority to acquire land and build dams and reservoirs in the Catskill Mountain watershed. At the time it was built, the Ashokan was one of the largest reservoirs in the world. Water from the Esopus Creek and tributaries feed the Ashokan.

We are pleased to announce that the Grand Prize Winner of the Hudson Riverscapes Photo Contest is Mark Heller, with over 600 cumulative votes for his photo, "Northbound Tug & Barge Breaking Through the Morning Mist!"

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the photo contest and shared all their beautiful Hudson River photos with us! As a benefit effort to the museum, many of the Hudson Riverscape photographers are graciously allowing Hudson River Maritime Museum to turn their beautiful images into notecards, prints, maybe even jigsaw puzzles! HRMM is very grateful for their generosity.

If you would like us to do another photo contest, leave a comment on this post and let us know!

                                                            No. 92- “New York”       
Many of the homes of this area contain a picture of a large steamboat- a colored picture showing a magnificent white passenger vessel against the background of a green towering mountain. This picture shows the steamboat “New York,” one of the vessels of the celebrated Hudson River Dayline, whose career was cut short after 21 years of service by a fire which burned her to the water’s edge.
              
The steel hull of the “New York” was built by Harlan & Hollingsworth at Wilmington, Delaware, in 1887. W. & A. Fletcher Company (North River Iron Works), of Hoboken, New Jersey, built her engine. Her hull was 301 feet long with an overall length of 311 feet, a breadth of beam of 40 feet 4 inches which widened to 74 feet over the guards, depth of hold measuring 11 feet 2 inches. Her gross tonnage was listed at 1,552 with a net tonnage rating of 1,091. The vertical beam engine of the “New York” had a cylinder diameter of 75 inches with a 12 foot stroke, and she carried three 33 foot boilers with a shell diameter 9¼ feet and front width measuring 11 feet. Her wheels, of the feathering type, were constructed of steel with 12 buckets measuring 12½ feet long by 3 feet 9 inches in width. In 1897 the “New York” was lengthened, 34 feet being added to the length of her hull making her 335 feet long and increasing her tonnage rating to 1,921 gross and 1,751 net tons.
              
The “New York” replaced the steamboat “Chauncey Vibbard,” which had been in service for years on the Hudson River Dayline. She was the second steel-hulled vessel built for the Dayline, and combined speed, luxury and beauty to surpass in elegance and appearance any marine craft built for the Hudson river up to that period.
              
The construction of the “New York” was somewhat different from the usual methods of steamboat construction, thus giving her a bit different appearance from the usual Hudson river boats. Instead of placing the shaft forward of the cylinder as in most beam engines, the cylinder was placed forward of the shaft.
              
On August 14, 1907, the “New York” made the run from New York to Albany in six hours and 13 minutes, an indication of the speed which the steamboat possessed, and together with her consort, the “Albany,” she formed a combination which was unquestionably the finest river day boat passenger steamers in the world.
              
October 1908 marked the event which indirectly led to the destruction of the “New York.” The tugboat “William Flannery” crashed into the “New York” in the North River off West 13th street, damaging the dayline steamer to such an extent around the guards, that she was taken to the Thomas Marvel Shipbuilding yards at Newburgh for repairs. On the morning of October 16, 1908, as she lay in the yards in Newburgh, fire was discovered in the after hold of the “New York.” Captain A.H. Harquart and the crew of 73 men were asleep in their berths but were aroused in time to get ashore safely. The fire gained headway so quickly that in less than five minutes from the time the alarm was sounded, the after end of the magnificent steamer was in flames. Captain Harquart realized that it would be impossible to save the vessel and ordered the crew ashore, but soon after they had landed it was discovered that four colored (sic) waiters were missing. A search of the shipyards was unsuccessful- and later it was found that the four men had been trapped below the decks by the flames and had perished.
              
The “New York” was completely destroyed and later the engine was taken from the smoke-blackened hull, rebuilt, and placed in the new steamboat “Robert Fulton,” which is now in service under the banner of the Hudson River Dayline.  

Recorded in the summer of 1976 in Woodstock, NY Fifty Sail on Newburgh Bay: Hudson Valley Songs Old & New was released in October of that year. Designed to be a booster for the replica sloop Clearwater, as well as to tap into the national interest in history thanks to the bicentennial, the album includes a mixture of traditional songs and new songs. This album is a recording to songs relating to the Hudson River, which played a major role in the commercial life and early history of New York State, including the Revolutionary War. Folk singer Ed Renehan (born 1956), who was a member of the board of the Clearwater, sings and plays guitar along with Pete Seeger. William Gekle, who wrote the lyrics for five of the songs, also wrote the liner notes, which detail the context of each song and provide the lyrics. This booklet designed and the commentary written by William Gekle who also wrote the lyrics for: Fifty Sail, Moon in the Pear Tree, The Phoenix and the Rose, Old Ben and Sally B., and The Burning of Kingston.

In the 1840’s, most of the Hudson Valley was still owned by a few landlords. Some of these lands had been patroonships granted by the Dutch, others were extensive manors granted by the English kings. Tenant farmers were at the mercy of their landlords and had to pay rent for their land – and keep little for their work. Then came the Anti-Rent Wars – the Tinhorn Rebellion, it was called, when farmers refused to pay their rents any longer and, they tarred and feathered the sheriffs who came to collect them. One of these Sheriffs was “Big  Bill” Snyder. https://folkways-media.si.edu/liner_notes/folkways/FW05257.pdf

Editor’s Note: Riding at night, sounding the call to action with tin horns, dressed in wild clothing with hats with horns on their heads,  the Anti-Renters, were referred to as “Calico Indians.” For more information about the Anti-Rent Wars see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Rent_War
​

BIG BILL SNYDER - LYRICS

The moon was shining silver bright,
The sheriff came in the dead of night;
High on a hill was an Indian true,
And on his horn a blast he blew –

Get out of the way, Big Bill Synder,
We’ll tar your coat and feather your hide, sir.

The Indians gathered at the sound,
Bill cocked his pistol, looked around;
Their painted faces, by the moon
He saw and heard that same old tune –

Get out of the way, Big Bill Synder,
We’ll tar your coat and feather your hide, sir.

Says Bill, “The music’s not so sweet
As I have heard; I think my feet
Had better be used,”  he started to run;
But the tin horn still kept sounding on –

Get out of the way, Big Bill Synder,
We’ll tar your coat and feather your hide, sir.

“Legs do your duty now” says Bill,
“There’s a thousand Indians on the hill,
When they catch Tories they tar their coats,
And feather their hides; and I hear the notes –“

Get out of the way, Big Bill Synder,
We’ll tar your coat and feather your hide, sir.

Bill ran and ran till he reached the wood,
And there, with horror still he stood,
He saw an Indian, tall and grim,
And he heard a horn, not a rod from him:

Get out of the way, Big Bill Synder,
We’ll tar your coat and feather your hide, sir.

Bill thought he heard the sound of a gun,
And he cried in fright, “My race is run:
Better that I had never been born
Than to hear the sound of that tin horn.”

Get out of the way, Big Bill Synder,
We’ll tar your coat and feather your hide, sir.

Well the news flew around and gained belief
That Bill was murdered by an Indian Chief;
And no one mourned that Bill was slain;
But the tin horn sounded again and again.

Get out of the way, Big Bill Synder,
We’ll tar your coat and feather your hide, sir.

Next day the body of Bill was found,
His writs were scattered on the ground,
And by his side a jug of rum
Told how he to his end had come.

Get out of the way, Big Bill Synder,
We’ll tar your coat and feather your hide, sir.

Editor’s Note: The following text is a verbatim transcription of an article featuring stories by Captain William O. Benson (1911-1986). Beginning in 1971, Benson, a retired tugboat captain, reminisced about his 40 years on the Hudson River in a regular column for the Kingston (NY) Freeman’s Sunday Tempo magazine. Captain Benson's articles were compiled and transcribed by HRMM volunteers Carl and Joan Mayer. See more of Captain Benson’s articles here. This article originally published July 4, 1976.

When I was pilot and captain of the tugboat “Callanan No. 1” from 1946 until 1954, we had a steward by the name of Ed Carpenter from Port Ewen.  In addition to being the best cook on the river, he was also an excellent story teller.  On more than one occasion, he would recall the summer months of 1910 when Halley’s Comet was streaking through the heavens.  He would also recall the days of another generation when the natural ice business was a big employer of men along the Hudson.  

At the time when Halley’s Comet was at its most spectacular, Ed Carpenter was cook on a repair barge of the Knickerbocker Ice Company by the name of “Beverwick.” During the summer of 1910, the “Beverwick” was tied up at the old ice house dock on Rattlesnake Island, just north of Coxsackie.  

Ed would relate how, night after night, he and other members of the ice house gang would sit on deck and watch with awe as Halley’s Comet would go through the skies.  Apparently, the comet had a fiery tail that never failed to amaze the comet watchers.  

A more earthly sight that also enthralled the comet fans was the passage of the big Albany night boats — the “Adirondack” and the “C.W. Morse,” the largest steamboats on the river.  Along the upper reaches of the Hudson, where the river is so narrow, they, too, were a particularly impressive sight.

In the narrow channel the huge steamers would dwarf everything else.  As they glided past with their hundreds of electric lights, their names spelled out in large electric signs on their hurricane decks, and their search lights probing the darkness of the night, they would appear to be one of mankind's most wondrous achievements.  

After the Albany night boat would pass from sight, Ed would turn in for a night’s rest, for it was up at 3:30 a.m. to start the hearty breakfast for the men working at the ice house, loading the ice barges for the New York market.  
​
In those days, before the invention of the home electric refrigerator, almost everyone used ice.  And most of the ice for the New York City area would come from the Hudson River north of Poughkeepsie.  A traveller on the upper Hudson would never be out of sight of an ice house — those huge wooden structures with double walls filled with sawdust that housed the winter’s harvest.  

The ice harvest would follow a fixed and then familiar pattern.  In the fall of the year, after pulling ice wagons through the streets of New York all summer, the ice company’s horses would be herded to the New York piers where they would board a steamboat to the upper Hudson ice houses.  

There they would be stationed until needed on the ice.  

Once the river froze over, generally in January, the ice harvest would begin.  Large numbers of men, usually boatmen layed off for the winter months, would be hired.  The horses would then be put to work and used to pull plows to scrape off the snow covering the ice, pull the markers to lay out the ice field, and to help pull the cut ice through the ice channels to the ice house elevators.  During a good winter, the same ice field might be harvested several times in order to fill the ice house.  

In the spring of the year, the horses would go back to New York by steamboat to resume their summer job of pulling the ice wagons through the city streets.  The ice itself would all be transported to New York by ice barges and a gang of men would be employed at the ice houses to load the barges.  

An ice barge was somewhat like a floating box.  The ice would be loaded on the inside of the box — the barge's hold — so that as much of the barge as possible, when loaded, would be set low in the water to use the lower river temperatures to keep the ice melting to a minimum.  

A river watcher could always spot an ice barge for it would invariably have a wind mill atop the barge.  The wind mill served the practical purpose of operating the barge’s pumps to pump overboard the water from the melting ice as the barge was towed down river.  There would be tows on the river during the summer that would consist solely of dozens of nested ice barges.  
​
The electric refrigerator and artificial ice making brought the natural ice industry to an abrupt end.  The ice barges soon disappeared from the scene.  The huge ice houses gradually passed from the river's banks.  Some were torn down, others burned to the ground in rather impressive conflagrations, and a very few survived until the 1940’s for the growing of mushrooms.  Like Halley’s Comet, the natural ice industry was a great show while it lasted.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  In 2018, the Hudson River Maritime Museum opened the Hudson River and its Canals exhibit to help celebrate the 200th anniversary of the construction of the Erie and Champlain canals between 1817 and 1825.  These canal led to far reaching economic and social changes for the areas adjacent to these canals but also for New York City and the Hudson River upon which this system ultimately depended.  The Barge Canal system, the backdrop for Paul Schneider’s article, was, completed little more than 100 years ago.  Built upon the work of the earlier canals, it was conceived instead on the use of motive power versus animal power.  And yet much of the construction still depended upon human labor. Paul Schneider’s article provides important insight into the labor practices and culture surrounding this enormous public works undertaking.

On a dreary November day three women and a photographer trudged through rain to examine conditions in a construction labor camp on the state’s barge canal. In one of the unkempt shacks housing workers, they “came upon an Italian who seemed to feel the camp[’s] desolation. He sighed as he said to us: ‘This, America?’” After proudly sharing photographs, pulled from his bunk, of Rome and of his children, “he pointed again to the waste of mud and water [outside]. ‘This, America?’ he said, ‘All for nine dollars a week.’”1
              
​This encounter occurred in 1909. The building of the barge canal system had been underway for four years. An additional nine years would pass before the massive undertaking spanning the state was completed. Now in its 101st year of operation, the New York State Barge Canal System is most easily recognizable by the enormous concrete structures that define it: hulking locks punctuated by gigantic steel gates, immense dams spanning and transforming the Mohawk River, and distinctive powerhouses once generating the electricity to operate each lock and the valves that filled and emptied it. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 2017 as “an embodiment of the Progressive Era emphasis on public works,” the barge canal was further recognized as “a nationally significant work of early twentieth century engineering and construction.”2 In 2015, the American Society of Civil Engineers named the five locks at Waterford, New York as a Historical Civil Engineering Landmark representing “the greatest series of high lift locks in the world … elevating boats through a height of 169 feet."3

Largely overlooked in the superlatives emphasizing engineering and construction prowess are the thousands of un-skilled laborers – many of them immigrants – whose back-breaking and often dangerous work made its construction possible. There are no monuments to them. No preserved shacks or reconstructed labor camps to reveal to modern visitors the conditions in which these laborers lived and worked.
              
The four unannounced callers to that unspecified construction camp were making an automobile tour – an arduous undertaking itself in that early era of auto travel – visiting similar camps associated with major governmental construction projects. In addition to the state barge canal system, New York City’s Board of Water Supply was, by damming the Esopus Creek in Ulster County, constructing the immense Ashokan Reservoir, linking it by a 120-mile long aqueduct to deliver an increased supply of water to the city.4 The small group of intrepid travelers included two members of the New York State’s Commission of Immigration, Lillian D. Wald and Frances A. Kellor. They were accompanied by Mary Dreier and photographer Lewis W. Hine.
              
A founder of the Henry Street Settlement House (which celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2018) in New York City, Lillian Wald was forty-two years old. While focusing her dynamic energies in the Lower East Side, she had expanded her advocation for improving the health, education, working and living conditions of the poor and immigrant communities to a state and national level. She invited the then serving Republican governor, Charles Evans Hughes, to Henry Street in 1908 and persuasively made her case regarding the exploitation of immigrants. In response, Governor Hughes appointed both she and Frances A. Kellor to the nine-member commission mandated by the state legislature to "make full inquiry, examination and investigation into the condition, welfare and industrial opportunities of aliens in the State of New York."5
              
Frances A. Kellor, described as a “hard-driving personality,” was thirty-six, had earned a law degree from Cornell University Law School in 1897, studied the newly emerging fields of sociology and social work at the University of Chicago, where she lived in Jane Addams Hull-House, and then in 1903 moved to New York City and the Henry Street Settlement House, where she concentrated her attention on the “difficulties of immigrants and other minorities in gaining equal treatment and opportunity in U.S. society.”6 Mary Dreier, age thirty-four, was at the time, the president of the New York Women’s Trade Union League. Characterized as “an ally of workers,” she, like Kellor, “believed that reform was best achieved by investigation, analysis, and legislation."7
              
The fourth member of the group, the photographer Lewis Wickes Hine, was the youngest at thirty-two. Writing of Hine’s work, American photographer, Walter Rosenblum suggests that, “the social turmoil of the Progressive period of American history was the fabric of his vision.” The work camp conditions he saw through his 5 x 7 view camera became part of that vision.8

What the lone Italian laborer sitting in the dismal surroundings of his work camp must have thought when these four suddenly trooped in unannounced is not recorded. Certainly, he must have been surprised by the fact that three of them were women. Wald, in her 1915 book, The House on Henry Street, records the meeting with a bit more detail:
​
In a shack that held three tiers of bunks, occupied alternately by the day and night shifts, with a cook-stove in a little clearing in the middle, we found a homesick man, who chanced not to be on the works, reading a book. When we engaged in conversation with him he pointed contemptuously to the bunks and their dirty coverings, and said, "This America! I show you Rome," and produced from under his bed a photograph of the Coliseum.9

The photograph shown above is of that same “homesick” laborer quoted above. This photograph was one of twenty taken by Hine that graphically illustrated Wald and Kellor’s report on the findings of their investigation published in the January 1910 issue of The Survey.
              
Wald’s criticisms of what she, Kellor, Dreier, and Hine discovered are blunt:
[The state] takes great care to prevent the freezing of cement, but permits any kind of houses to be used for its laborers. It is wholly indifferent as to how they are ventilated, lighted, or heated, how many men sleep in them, or whether the sleeping quarters are also used for cooking and eating and the bunks as cupboards. Neither does it care whether the men can keep themselves or their clothes clean.10

Quoting a New York Times article, The Albany Evening Journal of Tuesday, January 4, 1910 noted that the investigators discovered that “the mules were found to be housed in better quarters than the laborers.” Further, the reprinted article stated that,

“One entire state camp consists of five buildings. The largest about 50 by 20 feet, contains 52 bunks in a double tier and has a small stove for heating and cooking. The windows are closed tightly and there is one door. This building is set flat upon the side of the canal, upon swampy ground in the midst of mud so deep that on the day of the visit it was necessary to wear rubber boots.”11
              
Wald and Kellor in their published report articulated their belief that “here in a democracy, in our greatest creative achievements, we can set standards which will make for democracy and not for petty despotism, immorality and physical deterioration. State and city can set standards for life and labor in the construction camps, and see that they are enforced, as easily as they can determine the grade of stone used and the tensile strength of steel.”12 Particularly in the state barge canal camps, however, what they found fell far short of such standards.

 “With one exception, they found state and city personified, so far as the immigrant workers were concerned, by the padrone whose largest profits are to be drawn from the vice, drunkenness, instability and ignorance of the men …. In state camps they found the padrone in full control, supplying job, bed, board and drink; they found a building with sixty-five cots for a hundred men, another with bunks in the dark cellar; they found state camps wholly dependent upon any spring, well or pump in the neighborhood; they found nuisances committed without restriction, the grounds filthy, and no means for recreation.”13
              
​Who was the “padrone” Wald and Kellor referred to so vehemently? The word had its origins in fourteenth century Italy according to the Oxford English Dictionary. At that time, it referred to the master of a ship. The term came to be associated in the United States with “an exploitative (usually Italian) labor contractor, who employs unskilled Italian immigrants.”14 On the state and city government construction projects that Wald, Kellor, Dreier and Hine were investigating during their auto tour, the padrone acted as the intermediary between the construction contractor and the unskilled laborers that contractor required. This freed the governmental agencies responsible for these massive projects from having to recruit, care for, administer, manage, and supervise the huge temporary workforce needed to turn plans and specifications into physical and monumental reality.

In 1909 the padrone system was already decades old: a proven method of acquiring cheap labor needed to construct dams, railroads, canals, and roads in addition to mining operations of all types throughout the United States.15 It was extremely exploitive of those unskilled workers on whom it depended. John Koren in an 1897 report he wrote for the federal Department of Labor described in detail how it worked.

The American contractor, wishing to secure the cheapest possible labor wherewith to carry out some new enterprise, would apply to a resident Italian immigration agent (soon to be dignified by the name ‘banker’) for a stated number of men. The latter, having through subagents in Italy collected as many as required, shipped them across on prepaid tickets, for which he received a stipulated commission. On arrival of these immigrants the agent would make an additional profit by boarding them at exorbitant prices until they could be sent to their destination, the expense being deducted from their prospective wages. The further privilege of supplying them with food and shelter while at work was also commonly granted the agent, and if a banker, he could from time to time add to his profits by charging unreasonable rates for sending the scanty savings of the laborer to Italy. Finally, he had in prospect a commission on the return passage to Italy when the contract expired, for the immigration then as now, was chiefly of a migratory character. Few remained here beyond the time of their contract….16

The lonely Italian laborer encountered by Wald, Kellor, Dreier, and Hine had undoubtedly undergone something very similar to find himself sitting in that work camp shack in November 1909. While Hungarians and immigrants from Slavic countries were also caught up in the clutches of the padrone system, the majority of unskilled laborers came from Italy, specifically from southern Italy. In a report published in 1907 for the federal Bureau of Labor, Frank J. Sheridan included numerous tables of statistical information clearly showing the higher percentage of unskilled laborers immigrating into the United States and especially into New York State were southern Italians. For example, in the span of a year ending in June of 1906, 117,119 immigrants from southern Italy versus just 12,984 from northern Italy came to New York.17 The historic causes that created this late-nineteenth through early-twentieth century geographic wave are far too complex to address in this article. However, Sheridan presents three primary reasons driving “common laborers” to leave their native countries: “(1) primary necessity; (2) to escape compulsory military service and other burdens; (3) to become self-supporting.”18 Another compelling reason was unremitting poverty. Historian Michael La Sorte writes, “by the decade of 1910 Italians in the United States were sending home large sums of money …. for some families back home, this money represented a large portion of their total income.”19 Wald and Kellor echo this in the opening sentence of their 1910 report on the work camps: “Word has gone down the line and across the water that New York state is ‘America’ and that a ‘harvest is on.’ Thousands of alien laborers, writing home or returning to Italy or Austria, have told their countrymen of ‘America’ as they have seen it …”20

The expectations raised by such words going “down the line,” were often dampened by the reality immigrants found. For not only were the living conditions many were forced to endure terrible, but often their very presence was resented. The construction of the barge canal itself had faced considerable opposition from those who saw it has an enormous expenditure by the state in an outmoded form of transportation. A printed circular advancing opposition arguments was published in May 1903, asserting in part that, “if the policy of the State requires the expenditure of the State’s moneys for the purpose of creating facilities for transporting freight in competition with the existing railroads, why should it not be better for the State to construct a four track railroad from Buffalo to Albany along the present route of the Erie canal?”21 The same circular also pressed home an anti-immigrant labor contention: “if carried through, the enterprise is sure to injure the laboring population now employed to the upmost and to bring … tens of thousands of foreign laborers of the lowest type, who will remain when the work is done a drag on our own civilization and a menace to our native workers.”22
              
Obviously, the opposition challenges to the barge canal’s construction failed, but criticism remained as the actual work proceeded slowly. The Buffalo Times newspaper for Sunday, August 22, 1909, for example, reported on the findings of a tour of inspection a group of state legislators had just completed. Senator Henry W. Hill of Buffalo was quoted as saying, “we found the work progressing very satisfactorily in most places and the contractors generally entering into the work with enthusiasm.” He also asserted that the “undertaking …. in some respects is more difficult than the building of the Panama Canal, because the New York waterways involve so many more engineering and hydraulic problems.”23 Within such an atmosphere, it seems fair to conclude that both state officials in charge of the work and the contractors hired to implement it were under pressure to pursue construction with as much speed and economy as possible. Tellingly, the 1910 inspection tour by the legislators did not mention the laborers toiling across the state or the conditions under which they lived and worked.
              
​Did Lillian Wald or Frances Kellor or Mary Dreier or Lewis Hine – each of whom were well versed in the plight of immigrants coming into New York – tell the lonely Italian laborer they met in that barge canal work camp, that his experience was far from unique? We will never know, unless some written record of their visit eventually is found. His fellow countryman, Napoleone Colajanni, writing in 1909 bitterly observed that “the Americans consider the Italians as unclean, small foreigners who play the accordion, operate fruit stands, sweep the streets, work in the mines or tunnels, on the railroad or as ‘bricklayers.’”24 In fact, far more Italian immigrant laborers were employed on railroad construction in the northern states than on both the city and state construction projects Wald and her party were visiting. The living and working conditions of these workers were similar if not worse in some cases.25 It is from the experiences of those Italians in railroad construction work camps reported by Frank Sheridan that we finally hear the actual voices of some of these men. 

Sheridan writes that their declarations were given in evidence of the abuses they had undergone while working on railroad construction projects. He also notes that their words “are translations from the statements made in Italian by each of the laborers.”26 Below is just a portion extracted from one such statement. Names and locations were deleted in the original.

"During the summer of 1903 I was working on the _________ Railroad in the gang of ______, and was lodged at the shanties conducted by [the padrone] at _________. On account of the unhealthy conditions of the shanties, the rottenness of the groceries sold in the store therein, and the exorbitant prices charged, I couldn’t live there and I quitted work. I had to sleep on a handful of straw [charged 25 cents], pay $1 monthly for rent of the shanty, 25 cents per month for lamp and light, 50 cents monthly for coal, beer 6 cents per bottle, 1 ½-pound loaf of bread 10 cents, macaroni 8 cents per pound, tomatoes 14 cents a can, cheese 36 and 40 cents per pound …. and not only that, but bound to spend at least $10 per month, and with such high prices $10 was not enough to keep a man in shape for work fifteen days. Further, to secure work on the _______Railroad at such conditions, I had to pay to [the padrone] $10 [$5 per time] otherwise he wouldn’t allow me to work.27"
              
Today, we might think such prices remarkably cheap until we are reminded that unskilled Italian laborers were typically charged amounts that “were never less than two to four times the prevailing market prices.”28 So, for example, if a consumer paid $2.35 for a loaf of fresh white bread today in 2019, the immigrant buying that same loaf from the padrone run store in a work camp might be charged anywhere from $4.70 to $9.40. It is small wonder that workers sometimes simply walked away looking for better work and living conditions, sometimes scrimped together enough money to return to Italy, sometimes tenuously managed to establish themselves in the communities near where they worked, and sometimes simply had enough and attacked the padrone or his representatives. Late in April of 1908 this is exactly what happened in Waterford, New York. The Wyoming County Herald ran a story datelined April 29, Troy, which reported that:

 “a riot occurred among the Italians employed on the barge canal work at Waterford. The padrone who places men at work, it is charged, gets $5 from each man and then if the man does not trade at the supply store conducted by the padrone, that person is discharged, and another is hired. Several hundred Italians descended upon the store and there was a free fight in which clubs and fists were freely used. The Italians prevented all work at the section. Deputy sheriffs were necessary to quell the riot.29"

​What happened to either the padrone or the rioting laborers is not reported, but it illustrates the sheer frustration and anger that could build-up in the confines of the laborer camps.
              
​While not all canal construction workers lived in such camps, they represent what was an indispensable component in the creation of the barge canal system; a massively re-imagined and re-engineered waterway that served the state’s and nation’s urgent needs for the shipment of materials, fuel, and equipment during both World Wars I and II. 

​Today’s barge canal is characterized by pleasure boats, kayaks, tour boats, and leisurely piloted rental canal boats carrying visitors eager to experience its beauty and to explore the villages, towns, and cities it connects. Walkers, joggers, and bicyclists ply its banks along paved towpaths, the original need for which was eliminated by the self-powered vessels and towing tugs that replaced horses and mules from the pre-barge canal era. In the reigning tranquility of the canal today, its users hear no echoes of the shouts, groans, cries of pain or anger, laughter, insults, name calling, curt orders, hammers, squeaking wheel barrow wheels, dynamite detonations, shrill whistles and exhaust blasts from steam dredges and locomotives, and the myriad of other sounds that heralded its birth. The physical remains of those flimsy structures composing the work camps where thousands temporarily lived amid those sounds are long gone, but the human lives they barely sheltered are woven into the fabric of the history of the state. 

 1 Lillan D. Wald and Frances A. Kellor, “The Construction Camps of the People: The Findings of an Automobile Tour of Investigation of Camp Conditions Along the Line of New York State’s New Barge Canal and New York City’s New Aqueduct,” The Survey, January 1, 1910, 460 (hereafter cited as Wald, “Construction Camps”). The Survey was published by the Charity Organization Society of New York City, founded in 1882 and characterized as “one of the most influential philanthropic organizations in New York City.” For this quote see Anne M. Filiaci, “Lowell and the Charity Organization Society of New York,” accessed 30 December 2018, http://www.lillianwald.com/?page_id=216.
2 National Historic Landmark, A National Honor” Erie Canal National Heritage Corridor website, accessed 27 December 2018, https://eriecanalway.org/resources/NHL.
3 “Flight of Five Locks,” ASCE American Society of Civil Engineers, Historic Landmarks, accessed 27 December 2018, https://www.asce.org/project/flight-of-five-locks/.
 4 Edward Hagaman Hall, The Catskill Aqueduct and Earlier Water Supplies of the City of New York […] (New York: The Mayor’s Catskill Aqueduct Celebration Committee, 1917), 112. “The length of the aqueduct from Ashokan to this reservoir [Silver Lake Reservoir in Staten Island] is 119 miles, to be exact, but it is called 120 miles in round numbers.”
5 Report of the Commission of Immigration of the State of New York (Albany, NY: J. B. Lyon Company, 1909), 1. For an overview of the history of the Henry Street Settlement House and Lillian D. Wald visit its website at: https://www.henrystreet.org/about/our-history/exhibit-the-house-on-henry-street/ and especially view the short video there “Baptism of Fire – The House on Henry Street.”  
6 Allison D. Murdach, “France Kellor and the Americanization Movement,” Social Work 53, no.1 (January 2008): 93.
7 Ann Schofield, "To do & to be": portraits of four women activists, 1893-1986 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997), 50, 60.
 8 Walter Rosenblum, foreword to America & Lewis Hine: Photographs 1904-1940 (New York: Aperture, 1997), 12, 15.
9 Lillian D. Wald, The House on Henry Street, with a new introduction by Eleanor L. Brilliant, (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1991). First published 1915 by Henry Holt and Company. 295, (hereafter cited as Wald, House on Henry Street).
10  Wald, House on Henry Street, 296.
 11 “Barge Canal Labor,” The Albany Evening Journal (Albany, NY), January 4, 1910.
12 Wald, “Construction Camps,” from the Foreword, unpaginated, following page 448
13 Wald, “Construction Camps,” from the Foreword, unpaginated, following page 448
14 “padrone,” Oxford English Dictionary online, accessed February 9, 2019, http://www.oed.com.dbgateway.nysed.gov/view/Entry/135946?redirectedFrom=padrone#eid. The plural of padrone is padroni.
 15 Edwin Fenton asserts that the padrone system dates to the 1840s, while John Koren, writing about it for the Department of Labor in 1897, says its origins “are not easily traced” but seems to have come into prominent use after the Civil War during industrial recovery and growth during “which capital sought labor with almost reckless eagerness.” See Edwin Fenton, Immigrants and Unions, A Case Study: Italians and American Labor, 1870-1920 (New York: Arno Press, 1975), 77, and John Koren, "The Padrone System and Padrone Banks," Bulletin of the Department of Labor 9, March 1897 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1897), 113, hereafter cited as Koren, “The Padrone System.”
16 Koren, “The Padrone System,” 114.
 17 Frank J. Sheridan, “Italian, Slavic, and Hungarian Unskilled Immigrant Laborers in the United States,” Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor 72, September 1907 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1907), 409.
18 Sheridan, “Immigrant Laborers,” 406.
19 Michael La Sorte, La Merica: Images of Italian Greenhorn Experience (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985). 5.
20 Wald, “Construction Camps,” 449.
21 This circular is quoted in Henry Wayland Hill, “An Historical Review of Waterways and Canal Construction in New York State,” Buffalo Historical Society Publications, 12 (Buffalo: Buffalo Historical Society, 1908), 346.
22 Hill, “Historical Review,” 347.
23 “Four Years Yet on Barge Canal, Says H. W. Hill,” The Buffalo Times (Buffalo, NY), August 22, 1909. The Senator Hill quoted in the news article is very likely the same Henry W. Hill who wrote the 1908 article quoted in footnote 21.
 24 This quotation is from Napoleone Colajanni, Gli Italiani negli Stati Uniti (Napoli: Rivista Popolare, 1909), 44, translated and cited in La Sorte, La Merica, 61.
25 In a table included with Frank Sheridan’s 1907 report illustrated the numbers and percentages of various immigrant nationalities (dominated by Italians, Slavs, and Hungarians) employed in various occupations in both northern and southern states. In the North fully 75.93 percent of those immigrants engaged in railroad construction and repairs were Italians. Those immigrants in occupations categorized as “canal construction laborers” or “dam and waterworks construction,” were quite small by comparison. Sheridan’s breakdown of occupations may distort his results. For example, “excavating laborers, ditching laborers, and concrete and cement laborers” could all have been employed on either the barge canal or the Ashokan Reservoir projects. Also, his numbers are based on immigrants sent to these occupations by New York Employment Agencies and very likely do not reflect those hired out through the difficult to regulate padrone system. See Sheridan, “Immigrant Laborers,” 420.
26 Sheridan, “Immigrant Laborers,” 445.
27 Sheridan, “Immigrant Laborers,” 447.
28 La Sorte, La Merica, 81.
 29 “Riot Among Barge Canal Laborers,” Wyoming County Herald (Arcade, NY), May 01, 1908. 

This article was originally published in the 2019 issue of the Pilot Log. ​ ​If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!​

Editor’s Note: Mingulay is the second largest of the Bishop's Isles in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Located 12 miles (19 km) south of Barra

The Minch also called North Minch, is a strait in north-west Scotland, separating the north-west Highlands and the northern Inner Hebrides from Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides. The Lower Minch also known as the Little Minch, is the Minch's southern extension, separating Skye from the lower Outer Hebrides: North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist, Barra etc. It opens into the Sea of the Hebrides. The Little Minch is the northern limit of the Sea of the Hebrides.

The Longest Johns are a Bristol based, a cappella folk music band, born out of a mutual love of traditional folk songs and shanties.
https://www.thelongestjohns.com/

Mingulay Boat Song - The Longest Johns

Heave-'er-ho boys, let her go boys,
Swing her head 'round into the weather,
Heave-'er-ho boys, let her go boys,
Sailing homeward to Mingulay.

What care we though, wide the Minch is?
What care we, boys, for windy weather?
When we know that, every inch is
Sailing homeward to Mingulay.

Heave-'er-ho boys, let her go boys,
Swing her head 'round into the weather,
Heave-'er-ho boys, let her go boys,
Sailing homeward to Mingulay.

Wives are waiting, by the pier head,
Gazing seaward from the heather;
Bring her round boys, then we'll anchor,
'Ere the sun sets on Mingulay.

Heave-'er-ho boys, let her go boys,
Swing her head 'round into the weather,
Heave-'er-ho boys, let her go boys,
Sailing homeward to Mingulay.

Ships return now, heavy laden,
Mothers holding bairns a crying,
They'll return yet, when the sun sets,
Sailing homeward to Mingulay.

Heave-'er-ho boys, let her go boys,
Swing her head 'round into the weather,
Heave-'er-ho boys, let her go boys,
Sailing homeward to Mingulay.
​
Heave-'er-ho boys, let her go boys,
Swing her head 'round into the weather,
Heave-'er-ho boys, let her go boys,
Sailing homeward to Mingulay.