Poor White

Poor White

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Title: Poor White
Author: Sherwood Anderson
Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7414] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 26,
2003]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR
WHITE ***

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[Note: The evident misprint of Book Six for Book Five in the original
is preserved here.]
POOR WHITE
A NOVEL BY
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
AUTHOR OF
WINESBURG, OHIO

TO
TENNESSEE MITCHELL ANDERSON

BOOK I

CHAPTER I
Hugh McVey was born in a little hole of a town stuck on a mud bank
on the western shore of the Mississippi River in the State of Missouri.
It was a miserable place in which to be born. With the exception of a
narrow strip of black mud along the river, the land for ten miles back
from the town--called in derision by river men "Mudcat Landing"--was
almost entirely worthless and unproductive. The soil, yellow, shallow
and stony, was tilled, in Hugh's time, by a race of long gaunt men who
seemed as exhausted and no-account as the land on which they lived.
They were chronically discouraged, and the merchants and artisans of
the town were in the same state. The merchants, who ran their

stores--poor tumble-down ramshackle affairs--on the credit system,
could not get pay for the goods they handed out over their counters and
the artisans, the shoemakers, carpenters and harnessmakers, could not
get pay for the work they did. Only the town's two saloons prospered.
The saloon keepers sold their wares for cash and, as the men of the
town and the farmers who drove into town felt that without drink life
was unbearable, cash always could be found for the purpose of getting
drunk.
Hugh McVey's father, John McVey, had been a farm hand in his youth
but before Hugh was born had moved into town to find employment in
a tannery. The tannery ran for a year or two and then failed, but John
McVey stayed in town. He also became a drunkard. It was the easy
obvious thing for him to do. During the time of his employment in the
tannery he had been married and his son had been born. Then his wife
died and the idle workman took his child and went to live in a tiny
fishing shack by the river. How the boy lived through the next few
years no one ever knew. John McVey loitered in the streets and on the
river bank and only awakened out of his habitual stupor when, driven
by hunger or the craving for drink, he went for a day's work in some
farmer's field at harvest time or joined a number of other idlers for an
adventurous trip down river on a lumber raft. The baby was left shut up
in the shack by the river or carried about wrapped in a soiled blanket.
Soon after he was old enough to walk he was compelled to find work in
order that he might eat. The boy of ten went listlessly about town at the
heels of his father. The two found work, which the boy did while the
man lay sleeping in the sun. They cleaned cisterns, swept out stores and
saloons and at night went with a wheelbarrow and a box to remove and
dump in the river the contents of out-houses. At fourteen Hugh was as
tall as his father and almost without education. He could read a little
and could write his own name, had picked up these accomplishments
from other boys who came to fish with him in the river, but he had
never been to school. For days sometimes he did nothing but lie half