I never knew a man to hang back when a collection for a widow was being taken.

Contributions sometimes were as high as five dollars.

It made a heartrending scene: the broken body of a once strong man lying under a white sheet; the children playing around and laughing (if they were too young to know what it meant); the mother frantic with the thought that her brood was now homeless; and the big grimy workers wiping their tears with a rough hand and putting silver dollars into a hat.
With this money and the last wages of the dead man, the widow paid for the funeral and sometimes bought a ticket to the home of some relative who would give her her "keep" in return for her labor in the house.
Other relatives might each take one of the children "to raise," who, thus scattered, seldom if ever got together again.

When I became an iron worker there were several fellows in our union who didn't know whether they had a relative on earth.

One of them, Bill Williams, said to me: "Jim, no wonder you're always happy.