``The sleeping quarters were situated on the second deck, below the main deck.  A large space extending in width of the ship was subdivided into cabins containing two, four, and six berths.  Families and friends were lodged together.  Men had cabins on one side, women on the other.  The beds were arranged in two tiers and consisted of an iron framework, very simple but clean.  Each bed was supplied with a mattress, white sheet, and a blanket and pillow having a colored gingham covering.  These were clean at the outset, but were not changed during the voyage.  Each cabin was furnished with a washbasin, drinking glasses, towels, sick cans, and was cleaned every day and supplied with fresh water.

``The toilets were on the main deck.  There were 10 each for men and for women.  They were of a form convenient for use and were well equipped.  Cleanliness was maintained here as well as in every other part of the third-class quarters.  There were also rooms labeled men's and women's washhouses.  These proved to contain one bath tub each and about 10 wash basins.  Women were allowed to do some little laundry for the children in the basins, and a bath could be had by feeing the stewardess one-half mark.  This room was usually locked and could be used only by permission of the stewardess.

``Meals were served in a large dining room seating 300 persons and situated on the first deck below the main deck.  The tables accommodated 14 persons each for the most part and each was the special charge of one steward.  There were red covers, white napkins (which were changed once during the journey), heavy white porcelain dishes, and good cutlery.  There was a double supervision and a thorough one by two higher officers of the dining room, as well as of the sleeping quarters and promenade deck.  In consequence of this the stewards performed their duties carefully and thoughtfully, and so gave splendid service.  The food, though it offered practically only actual necessities, was sufficient in quantity and properly prepared and decently served.

``The menu card which appeared each morning read about thus:

``Breakfast.  Cereal, meat or eggs (sometimes), bread, butter, jam, coffee.

``Dinner.  Soup, meat, potatoes, one other vegetable, stewed fruit (occasionally), dessert.

``Three-o'clock lunch.  Coffee and coffee cake.

``Supper.  Bread, butter, tea, meat.

``The open deck extending over the part of the vessel allotted to the third class served as its promenade deck.  There was also a small upper deck, supplied with four benches.  On this upper deck was an American bar, well patronized, also a smoking room containing a piano.  There was no special sitting room for women.

``For entertainment there was a very fair library of German and English books.  The band played a half hour each afternoon in the dining room.  Walking on the deck was popular, since the air below in the cabins was heavy.

``The stewards cleaned and scrubbed all day and everything was kept clean.  The floor in the dining room, the decks, and all the passageways between the cabins were washed every day.  The floors in the cabins were swept as often and washed when necessary.

``There was a separate entrance to the steward's quarters, and except when taking the air on deck they did not mingle with the passengers.  Sailors and others of the crew came into the third-class quarters only to perform definite duties.

``The nearly 300 passengers were a mixed lot--from fairly well-to-do Americans, German artisans, clerks etc., coming to America to try their fortune to servants returning from a visit to their native lands, laborers returning after the crisis, peasant women going to their husbands in the mining sections, and sheep herders, clothed in crude garments made by themselves from the skins of the sheep; from those who understood the use of the fork to those who ate with their fingers.  Nor was this mingling of extremes delightful to either side.  Those who came from comfortable circumstances found accommodations somewhat too plain and simple and the presence of `them people awful,' meaning the immigrants.  The latter, again being made to feel their inferiority, held themselves in the background and hesitated to enjoy the comforts for which they had paid.  Some who had been obliged to pay the difference with their last money and go third class worried about their admittance at Ellis Island, and so did not enjoy the added comforts.  Others were glad that they had escaped the steerage, though it took their last or all but that.

``On the  each class was not so closely confined to its own quarters; at least it was easy enough to go into the steerage and the third class.

`` During daily visits to the steerage I made the acquaintance of a Bohemian girl there.  She, though somewhat surprised at the generous offer, gladly changed places on the steamer with me.  Our arrangement occasioned no serious inquiries.

``The steerage was located in the bow of the vessel.  The first entirely inclosed deck extending the entire length and width of the steamer was termed the main deck.  On this there were three large compartments.  The foremost of these was assigned to the use of families or women with children.  The next, not being required for sleeping quarters on this trip, had its beds piled in one corner and was supplied with long wooden tables, having benches attached on either side.  This was the dining room, also the general lounging place in stormy weather.  The third room was the sleeping quarters of women traveling alone.  On the deck below were three similar compartments.  The men slept in the middle of these.  The framed used in the steerage, built in two tiers and of the required dimensions.  Each was supplied with a mattress and pillow of seagrass covered with a colored slip, a pair of gray blankets and a life-preserver acting as a second pillow.  These beds received no attention from the stewards throughout the entire voyage.  Besides being a sleeping place, each bed also served as a repository for all hand baggage, additional clothing, and food, and as a rack for towels.  Whatever belongings the steerage passenger had with him must be tucked away in his bed.  Each berth, littered as it necessarily was by every possession that the passenger could not wear or carry continually on his person, was nevertheless his one and only place of refuge or withdrawal.  Here, amid bags and baskets, outer wraps and better garments saved for disembarking, towels, and private drinking cups and teapots, each of us undressed for the night and combed and dressed in the morning.  Nor could there be proper or even decent preparation for retiring owing both to lack of privacy and to the lack of space for the disposal of clothes.  These must remain in the berth, and so it made little difference whether they were about or merely over the person.  If the pipes running over head sprung leaks, as they did on several occasions, garments were safer under the blankets than on top of them.  As for privacy, that is left entirely out of consideration in the steerage, where people are housed together in such large numbers and must spend every hour of the twenty-four, and this for many days, in the presence of so many others.

``This entire lack of privacy accounts for more than one of the filthy or indecent habits of the immigrants on board.  People, both men and women, who were ordinarily cleanly about their person complained that it was totally impossible to keep clean with the given accommodations.  A self-respecting person couldn't wash properly in a room that was being used at the same time by several others, and there was no avoiding becoming dirty.  Some very nice German girls, seeking to change their linen in private, waited until long after midnight, when all were asleep, and even then stood as guard and screen for each other against the steward on duty in the compartment.

``The floors in all the steerage quarters except on the main or open deck were made of large sheets of iron.  In the sleeping compartments, though the floors, even under the berths, must, be kept free of baggage, they were never washed.  They were swept in the morning in preparation for the daily inspection by the captain and his officers.  And whenever the waste accumulated it was again swept.  But this sweeping by no means kept the floor clean.  No sick cans or receptacles for waste of any kind were provided.  The sea was rough much of the time and there were many sick.  This alone kept the floor wet and in an awful condition, and since it was never washed the smell from it was dreadful.  The cleaning and littering of the floor went on in regular rounds.  When the steward had finished sweeping, he brought out from his private stores a basket of boiled eggs and offered them for sale at all the berths.  Then followed a basket of apples, another of oranges, dried prunes, pickled herrings, and sausage.

``The immigrants bought as freely as their purses allowed of these edibles to supplement the regular meals, and when the steward had completed his round of sales the floor was again littered with egg shells, orange peels, apple cores, prune stones, and herring bones.  Nor could it be otherwise.  There were no waste cans in which to throw these, and passengers more or less sick could not be expected to leave their berths and climb up on the open deck to throw such waste into the water.  On the many stormy days water came down through the hatchways and through leaks in the ceiling.

``The sleeping quarters were always a dismal, damp, dirty, and most unwholesome place.  The air was heavy, foul, and deadening to the spirit and the mind.  Those confined to these beds by reason of sickness soon lost all energy, spirit, and ambition.  A division of the steerage into two classes was soon apparent.  Those who were good sailors and could be up and out kept away from the sleeping rooms until very late and left them often as early as 5 a.m.  Those whom seasickness rendered weak and helpless in their beds were so stupefied and enervated by the heavy, foul atmosphere that they continued to lie in their bunks as though in a stupor.  Such surroundings could not produce the frame of mind with which it is desirable that newcomers approach our land and receive their first impressions of it.

``The dining room was quite as cheerless and dispiriting.  At times when steerage travel is heavy it is a sleeping compartment, as are all the other rooms of the steerage.  The three or four thousand Italians who are to return home for the holidays on the  will not have the convenience of even this crude dining room, but must eat wherever they can find room to stand or sit.  The furniture of this dining room consisted of rather ingenious pieces, a table and chairs all in one piece.  A long board attached to the framework of the table on either side served as an immovable bench.  This combination piece of furniture is probably convenient to handle in moving, but it certainly was most inconvenient for women to have to step over the benches getting in and out.

``In the serving of the meals the women were shown some consideration.  Their tables were set by stewards.  Each place was given a heavy, white porcelain soup plate, a knife, fork, and spoon.  The knives, the very cheapest quality of steel, were cleaned once during the voyage, and then the stewards gathered a crowd of the women passengers to help sandpaper them.  There were just barely enough dishes to go around, and more often not quite enough.  For this reason the passengers soon learned it was necessary to get a place at the tables as soon as they heard the rattle of dishes, to grab a plate and the cutlery as soon as it left the stewards' hands and hold it until the food came.

``The following bill of fare for the steerage was posted on the walls and was quite closely followed:

Breakfast, 7 a. m.  Coffee with milk and sugar; fresh bread, butter, oatmeal, corned beef, or cheese or herring.

Dinner, 12 m.  Sunday: Bouillon with rice and vegetables, fresh meat, potatoes, pudding with plum sauce.  Monday:  Pea soup, fresh beef or salted pork, potatoes, and sauerkraut.  Tuesday:  Bouillon with rice, fresh meat, potatoes, French beans.  Wednesday:  Barley soup, fresh or salted beef, potatoes, cabbage or carrots.  Thursday:  Bouillon with rice and vegetables, fresh meat, potatoes, pudding with plum sauce.  Friday:  Bean soup, fresh beef or salted pork, potatoes, turnips or sauerkraut.  Saturday:  Barley soup with plums or bouillon, fresh or salted meat, potatoes, and sauce.

Afternoon, 3 o'clock.  Coffee with milk and sugar, bread or cake.