Chapter XVII

_Bars and Barkeepers_

In the old days on the river, whiskey was not classed as one of the

luxuries. It was regarded as one of the necessities, if not the

prime necessity, of life. To say that everybody drank would not be

putting much strain upon the truth, for the exceptions were so few as

scarcely to be worth counting. It was a saying on the river that if a

man owned a bar on a popular packet, it was better than possessing a

gold mine. The income was ample and certain, and the risk and labor

slight. Men who owned life leases of steamboat bars willed the same

to their sons, as their richest legacies. Ingenious and far-seeing

men set about accumulating bars as other men invested in two, three,

or four banks, or factories.

"Billy" Henderson of St. Louis was the first financier to become a

trust magnate in bars. He owned the one on the "Excelsior", on which

boat he ran between St. Louis and St. Paul. Later, he bought the

lease of the bar on the "Metropolitan", and still later, when the

Northern Line was organized, he bought the bars on all the boats,

putting trusty "bar-keeps" aboard each, he himself keeping a general

oversight of the whole, and rigorously exacting a mean average of

returns from each, based upon the number of passengers carried. This

system of averages included men, women, and children, and "Indians

not taxed", presupposing that a certain percentage of the passengers'

money would find its way into his tills, regardless of age, sex, or

color. What his judgment would have been had one of the craft been

chartered to carry a Sunday school picnic from St. Louis to St.

Paul, will never be known. Such an exigency never confronted him, in

those days. The judgment rendered was, that he was not far off in

his conclusions as to the average income from the average class of

passengers carried.

Ordinarily, the bartenders were young men "of parts". None of them,

so far as I know, were college graduates; but then college graduates

were then mighty few in the West in any calling--and there were

bars in plenty. It was required by their employers that they be

pleasant and agreeable fellows, well dressed, and well mannered.

They must know how to concoct a few of the more commonplace fancy

drinks affected by the small number of travellers who wished such

beverage--whiskey cocktails for the Eastern trade, and mint juleps

for the Southern. The plain, everyday Western man took his whiskey

straight, four fingers deep, and seldom spoiled the effect of his

drink by pouring water on top of it. The "chaser" had not, at that

early day, become fashionable, and in times of extreme low water it

was not permitted that water should be wasted in that manner when all

was required for purposes of navigation.

The barkeeper was also supposed to know how to manufacture a

choice brand of French brandy, by the judicious admixture of burnt

peach stones, nitric acid, and cod-liver oil, superimposed upon a

foundation of Kentucky whiskey three weeks from the still. He did it,

too; but judicious drinkers again took theirs straight, and lived the

longest.

I flatter myself that I can recall the name of but one bartender with

whom I sailed. While I had no very strong scruples about drinking

or selling liquor, I seldom patronized the bar beyond the purchase

of cigars and an occasional soft drink. I remember one dispenser,

however, from his short but exceedingly stormy experience on the

"Fanny Harris". He was an Irish lad, about twenty or twenty-one years

of age, and not very large. He was sent on board by the lessee of the

bar, who lived in Dubuque.

Charley Hargus, our chief clerk, did not like the Irish. He had

personal reasons for disliking some member of that nationality, and

this dislike he handed on to all its other members with whom he came

in contact. There were no Irishmen among the officers of the "Fanny

Harris", and when Donnelly came aboard to take charge of the bar

Hargus strongly objected, but without avail. He then set himself

about the task of making life so uncomfortable for the lad that he

would be sure to transfer to some other boat, or quit altogether,

an end accomplished within three months. The process afforded rare

amusement to such witnesses as happened to see the fun, but there

was no fun in it for Donnelly; and in later years, when I came to

think it over, my sympathy went out to the poor fellow, who suffered

numberless indignities at the hands of his tireless persecutor. If

Donnelly--who was not at all a bad fellow, was earning his living

honestly, and never did anything to injure Hargus--had had the spirit

common to most river men in those days, he would have shot the chief

clerk and few could have blamed him.

Bars are not looked upon with the same favor in our day, as in the

past. It is claimed that upon some of the boats plying upon the

upper river there are now no bars at all. If a person thinks he

must have liquor on the trip, he must take it with his baggage. It

is further credibly asserted that many of the officers handling the

steamers are teetotalers; further, that there is no more profit in

the bar business, and that investors in that kind of property are

becoming scarce. Modern business conditions are responsible for much

of the change that has taken place, especially in the transportation

business, within the last twenty-five years. Railroad and steamboat

managers do not care to intrust their property to the care of

drinking men, and it is becoming more and more difficult for such to

secure positions of responsibility. As the display of liquor in an

open bar might be a temptation to some men, otherwise competent and

trusty officers, the owners are adopting the only consistent course,

and are banishing the bar from their boats.

This does not apply in all cases, however. A few years ago I took a

trip from St. Paul to St. Louis on one of the boats of the Diamond

Jo Line. There was a bar on the boat, but it seemed to depend for

its patronage upon the colored deck crew. They were pretty constant

patrons, although their drinking was systematically regulated. A side

window, opening out upon the boiler deck promenade, was devoted to

the deck traffic. If a rouster wanted a drink he must apply to one

of the mates, who issued a brass check, good for a glass of whiskey,

which the deck hand presented at the bar, and got his drink. When pay

day came, the barkeeper in his turn presented his bundle of checks

and took in the cash. How many checks were issued to each man on the

trip from St. Louis to St. Paul and return, I do not know; but it

is safe to say that the sum total was not permitted to exceed the

amount of wages due the rouster. Some of the "niggers" probably had

coming to them more checks than cash, at the close of the voyage. The

regulation was effective in preventing excess, which would demoralize

the men and render them less valuable in "humping" freight.

The bartender always poured out the whiskey for the "coons", and for

the latter it was not a big drink. It was, likewise, not a good drink

for a white man, being a pretty tough article of made-up stuff, that

would burn a hole in a sheet-iron stove. If it had been less fiery

the rousters would have thought they were being cheated.

While on this trip, I never saw an officer of the boat take a

drink at the bar, or anywhere else, and but few of the passengers

patronized it. It accentuated as much as any other one thing the fact

that the "good old times" on the river were gone, and that a higher

civilization had arisen. But peddling cheap whiskey to "niggers"!

What would an old-time bartender have thought of that? The bare

insinuation would have thrown him into a fit. But we are all on an

equality now, black and white--before the bar.

[Illustration: WINONA, MINNESOTA. The Levee in 1862.]