Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 3, 1895 - Travels and Excursions, Volume II

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT
by his story, not so much to the horrors of the
steerage as to the habitual comfort of the working
classes. One foggy, frosty December evening, I
encountered on Liberton Hill, near Edinburgh, an
Irish labourer trudging homeward from the fields.
Our roads lay together, and it was natural that we
should fall into talk. He was covered with mud ;
an inoffensive, ignorant creature, who thought the
Atlantic Cable was a secret contrivance of the
masters the better to oppress labouring mankind;
and I confess I was astonished to learn that he had
nearly three hundred pounds in the bank. But this
man had travelled over most of the world, and
enjoyed wonderful opportunities on some American
railroad, with two dollars a shift and double pay on
Sunday and at night ; whereas my fellow-passenger
had never quitted Tyneside, and had made all that
he possessed in that same accursed, down-falling
England, whence skilled mechanics, engineers, mill-
wrights, and carpenters were fleeing as from the
native country of starvation.
Fitly enough, we slid off on the subject of strikes
and wages and hard times. Being from the Tyne,
and a man who had gained and lost in his own pocket
by these fluctuations, he had much to say, and held
strong opinions on the subject. He spoke sharply
of the masters, and, when I led him on, of the
men also. The masters had been selfish and obstruc-
tive ; the men selfish, silly, and light-headed. He
rehearsed to me the course of a meeting at which he
had been present, and the somewhat long discourse
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