Crimes of Charity
by Konrad Bercovici · English · Gutenberg #42363 · 337,693 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Crimes of Charity
Author: Konrad Bercovici
Author of introduction, etc.: John Reed
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Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRIMES OF CHARITY ***
CRIMES OF CHARITY
[Illustration]
THE NEWEST BORZOI BOOKS
ASPHALT
_By Orrick Johns_
BACKWATER
_By Dorothy Richardson_
CENTRAL EUROPE
_By Friedrich Naumann_
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE
_By William English Walling_
THE BOOK OF SELF
_By James Oppenheim_
THE BOOK OF CAMPING
_By A. Hyatt Verrill_
THE ECHO OF VOICES
_By Richard Curle_
MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY
_By Alexander Kornilov_
THE RUSSIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING
_By Alexandre Benois_
THE JOURNAL OF LEO TOLSTOI (1895-1899)
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SUPER-TRAMP
_By William H. Davies_
_Preface by Bernard Shaw_
CRIMES _of_ CHARITY
BY
KONRAD BERCOVICI
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY JOHN REED
[Illustration: Decoration]
NEW YORK ALFRED A. KNOPF MCMXVII
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_To my Naomi_
INTRODUCTION
There is a literary power which might be called Russian--a style of bald
narration which carries absolute conviction of human character, in
simple words packed with atmosphere. Only the best writers have it; this
book is full of it. I read the manuscript more than a year ago, and I
remember it chiefly as a series of vivid pictures--a sort of epic of our
City of Dreadful Day. Here we see and smell and hear the East Side; its
crowded, gasping filth, the sour stench of its grinding poverty, the
cries and groans and lamentations in many alien tongues of the hopeful
peoples whose hope is broken in the Promised Land. Pale, undersized,
violent children at play in the iron street; the brown, steamy warmth of
Jewish coffee-houses on Grand Street; sick tenement rooms quivering and
breathless in summer heat--starkly hungry with the December wind cutting
through broken windows; poets, musicians, men and women with the blood
of heroes and martyrs, babies who might grow up to be the world's
great--stunted, weakened, murdered by the unfair struggle for bread.
What human stories are in this book! What tremendous dramas of the soul!
It is as if we were under water, looking at the hidden hull of this
civilization. Evil growths cling to it--houses of prostitution,
sweat-shops which employ the poor in their bitter need at less than
living wages, stores that sell them rotten food and shabby clothing at
exorbitant prices, horrible rents, and all the tragi-comic
manifestations of Organised Charity.
Every person of intelligence and humanity who has seen the workings of
Organised Charity, knows what a deadening and life-sapping thing it is,
how unnecessarily cruel, how uncomprehending. Yet it must not be
criticised, investigated or attacked. Like patriotism, charity is
respectable, an institution of the rich and great--like the high tariff,
the open shop, Wall street, and Trinity Church. White slavery recruits
itself from charity, industry grows bloated with it, landlords live off
it; and it supports an army of officers, investigators, clerks and
collectors, whom it systematically debauches. Its giving is made the
excuse for lowering the recipients' standard of living, of depriving
them of privacy and independence, or subjecting them to the cruelest
mental and physical torture, of making them liars, cringers, thieves.
The law, the police, the church are the accomplices of charity. And how
could it be otherwise, considering those who give, how they give, and
the terrible doctrine of "the deserving poor"? There is nothing of
Christ the compassionate in the immense business of Organised Charity;
its object is to get efficient results--and that means, in practise, to
just keep alive vast numbers of servile, broken-spirited people.
I know of publishers who refused this book, not because it was untrue,
or badly written; but because they themselves "believed in Organised
Charity." One of them wrote that "there must be a bright side." I have
never heard the "bright side." To those of us who know, even the Charity
organisation reports--when they do not refuse to publish them--are
unspeakably terrible. To them, Poverty is a crime, to be punished; to
us, Organised Charity is a worse one.
JOHN REED.
CONTENTS
THE STOVE--A PARABLE 3
MY FIRST IMPRESSION 6
THE SECOND DAY 20
AT WORK 26
WATCH THEIR MAIL 49
THE ROLLER SKATES 59
THE TEST 69
SCABS 80
SAVING HIM 86
"TOO GOOD TO THEM" 90
ROBBERS OF THE PEACE 101
THE SIGN AT THE DOOR 106
WHAT IS DONE IN HIS NAME? 118
THE PICTURE 121
THE PRICE OF LIFE 131
AIR--FROM FIFTH FLOOR TO BASEMENT 139
THE INVESTIGATORS 145
THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 150
MOTHER AND SON 161
CLIPPING WINGS OF LITTLE BIRDS 167
THE ORPHAN HOME 174
WHY THEY GIVE 185
THE KITCHEN 192
CHOCOLATE 196
OUT OF THEIR CLUTCHES 199
"THE HOME" 202
"BISMARCK" 209
TWENTY-ONE CENTS AND A QUARTER 213
VISITING DAY 223
EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES 225
MY LAST WEEK IN THE WAITING ROOM 231
TUESDAY 244
WEDNESDAY 253
AT NIGHT 258
THURSDAY 264
CRIMES OF CHARITY
THE STOVE--A PARABLE
There was once a man with a merciful heart who had a large fortune, and
when he died he left much gold to his brother to use as he wished, and
an additional amount in trust, to succour the poor. In his will he
wrote:
"Build a big house and put therein a big stove and heat the stove well.
On the door thou shalt put a sign in red letters that shall read: 'Ye
poor of the land, come in and warm your bodies; ye hungry of the land,
come and get a bowl of warm wine and a loaf of bread.' This will be my
monument. I want no tombstone on the grave wherein my body will lie.
Dust unto dust descends, but my soul will be alive in the blessings of
the poor."
Peacefully the man died. They buried him in a lonely place under a tree.
Then the brother brought masons and carpenters and built a big house of
stone, as was written in the will, and when the house was finished he
called a painter and had painted in letters, red and big, so they could
be seen from very far, the words his brother had written: "Ye poor of
the land, come in and warm your bodies; ye hungry of the land, come and
get a bowl of warm wine and a loaf of bread." And every one admired the
good deed and many other rich men prepared their wills so as to provide
help for the poor, that they might live eternally in their blessings.
The next day, when the stove, the big stove, was put in, the brother of
the dead threw the doors open for a feast to the rich. And they all
blessed the dead because of his goodness to the poor.
On the third day the doors were opened to the poor, and it so happened
that the locusts had eaten up the wheat on the fields that year, so that
there were many without bread and who had to seek shelter in other
places. They passed by the red sign and came in to warm themselves and
eat, and though busy with their own sorrows they blessed the dead one.
Many were the bowls of wine and loaves of bread given to the poor. But
the brother was greedy and wanted all for himself, so day and night his
constant thought was how to comply with the will of his brother and the
sign on the door and yet not give bread and wine to the poor. He read
the will again and the devil fastened him to the word "stove," and the
devil within him said: "Stove--stove--the stove will save you."
Greed sharpened his wits and the next morning he rose early and made a
big fire and closed all the windows and doors. When the poor came to
warm themselves the heat would chase them out again, and instead of
blessing they cursed the dead who had so artfully attracted them into
the house, only to torture them with the heat of the room. The wine
would remain untasted and the bread untouched.
The poor of the land spoke:
"Are we to be punished because the locusts ate our grain?"
And the house is called "the Devil's Spot." The wanderer freezes on the
snow-covered field, the poor starve in their huts, but they take not the
bread. And one day, a child said: "See! the sign! the red letters are
written with blood."
In a lonely place is the forgotten grave of a merciful man.
On a lonely road is a house, where the poor dare not enter, and on the
big stove stands the devil, and laughs and laughs. And when one asked
him why he laughed the devil showed his teeth and answered: "This is the
best place that ever man built for me."
MY FIRST IMPRESSION
I was ushered into the private office of the Manager of the Charity
Institution. He was writing at his desk with his back towards the door.
He did not turn when we came in. My protector, Mr. B., who obtained this
job for me as special investigator, coughed a few times to attract the
Manager's attention. Finally the gentleman turned around.
"Oh, how do you do? I did not know you were in the office at all! I am
so busy, you see."
I well knew that he was aware of our presence, because he had sent the
office boy to call us.
"And who is this gentleman?" he asked, turning in his chair and
scrutinising me from head to foot.
Mr. B. introduced me, added a few complimentary remarks as to my ability
and honesty, and finished with, "I know he's just the man we want."
The Manager, Mr. Rogers, kept on looking at me while the other spoke,
and having most probably satisfied himself that I was all right, nodded
to Mr. B., rang for the office boy and called in the Assistant Manager,
to whom he in turn introduced me, finishing with, "Don't you think that
he'll do?" To which the Assistant Manager respectfully assented.
"In fact," Mr. Rogers said to the Assistant Manager, "Mr. Lawson, I
think I'll give him over to you."
"Sir," he again addressed me, "you are under the orders of Mr. Lawson.
You will report to him, take his orders, his advice, and I hope that
everything will be right." As he finished he politely led us to the
door. "Good-bye, sir. Let's hope you will accomplish the right kind of
work for us."
We entered the office of the Assistant Manager. Mr. B. soon excused
himself and left the room. Mr. Lawson let me wait fully ten minutes
before he addressed a word to me. He busied himself with the different
papers in the pigeon holes of his desk, but this was only pretence, I
felt right along, to impress me with his superior rank.
After having satisfied himself that he had accomplished this, he said to
me, still looking at the papers:
"Why don't you sit down? Sit down, sir."
There was no chair except the one right near his desk, so I had to
remain standing.
"What's your name?"
"Baer, Baer."
"Oh, yes," and he offered the chair near his desk. I had hardly seated
myself when he stood up, and making a wry face said:
"I haven't any time to-day to give you instructions. We'll leave it for
to-morrow. Meanwhile, I'll turn you over to Mr. Cram. He might be of use
to you, as he has had a great deal of experience in this line of work."
He rang for the office boy. "Call Mr. Cram," was the order. A few
seconds later Mr. Cram, a young man of about twenty, appeared. Mr.
Lawson introduced me and told Cram to keep me at his desk for the
afternoon. It was one o'clock.
We passed through all the offices, where he introduced me to a few of
the other employees, and then proceeded to the basement.
The place was in half darkness, cold and dreary, and I stumbled along.
Near the windows, towards the street, was a desk, and near the desk a
gas oven. Cram put a chair near the desk, and as my eyes became
accustomed to the semi-darkness I began to distinguish men, women and
children sitting on the benches at the farther end of the cellar.
Mr. Cram again inquired my name, remembered that he had read some of my
stories, shook hands again with me and added that he was himself a "red
hot Socialist," "a reformer" of the real kind, and he grew very
friendly. I had lit a cigarette, but seeing a "No smoking" sign I put
it out.
"Why don't you smoke?" he asked, filling his pipe. I pointed to the
sign. "That is not for us," he said, shrugging his shoulders and
pointing to the people who were sitting at the farther end of the room.
"That's for the applicants--for the rabble, you know."
I refused to smoke. He sat at his desk, fumbled in the pigeon-holes for
awhile, then sat back in his chair and puffed dreamily at his pipe for a
few moments, following with his eyes the smoke-rings. Then he called out
unconcernedly:
"Grun!"
Nobody answered.
"Grun!" he called again, this time louder.
"What's the matter? Grun! Grun!" and putting his pipe down on the desk
he stood up and looked over to where the "rabble" sat.
"Whose name is Grun? Grun?"
A man of about forty stood up and asked: "Grun? Did you call Grun?"
Mr. Cram looked him straight in the face.
"Can't you hear?" he thundered. "Can't you hear when I call? Come
here--you."
"Ha?" the applicant queried submissively.
"Can't you hear?" and turning to me he said: "You see? that's how they
are! Spite-workers. He'll let me call ten times, as though I was the
applicant and not he; they are all the same, vicious
scoundrels--derelicts, beggars, rascals. You'll see what a damned lie
he'll put up."
He sat back on his chair and read the application a few times.
"How old are you?"
"Ha?" the poor man queried again, putting a hand to his ear and bending
over the desk.
"Are you crazy? Don't you understand? How old are you?" And addressing
me again he said: "A fine job, isn't it?"
"Ha? speak a little louder. I'm hard of hearing," the applicant begged.
"Write down your questions," I suggested, giving the man pencil and
paper.
"Oh! I see!" Cram said, "you have no experience. Do you really think
that he cannot hear? It's a fake--a fake. He hears better than you and
I. It's a fake--a rotten old trick. I tell you, it's some job I have."
"But maybe he is deaf," I insisted.
Mr. Cram looked at me with scorn, and turning to the applicant he
shouted at the top of his voice:
"How old are you?"
"A little louder," the man begged.
The investigator puffed at his pipe in disgust, and after my insistence
consented to write down his questions.
"How long have you been deaf?" he wrote down.
"I have just been discharged from the hospital," the man answered. "They
made an operation on my ears."
"You see?" I put in.
"Oh! it's all a fake--a rotten old fake. He hears better than you and I,
I tell you," Cram still insisted.
"Have you a doctor's certificate?" I wrote on a slip, handing it to the
applicant.
Quickly the man fumbled at his vest pocket, to prove his case, but Cram
did not want to be convinced. With a movement of his hand he stopped the
man.
"It's all right. We know it all. It's all a fake, I tell you, Mr. Baer.
They get certificates for fifty cents."
I looked up at the applicant. His face betrayed no sign that he heard
what had just been said, and I thought it fortunate for the "red hot
Socialist."
Cram put his application in a pigeon-hole and told the man to go home.
The man did not move, but fixed questioning eyes on Cram's lips, seeking
to understand.
"Go home," the other yelled. He showed no sign of understanding except
that he knew he was addressed. "Ha?" he queried.
"Go to hell," Cram answered.
I wrote upon a piece of paper: "Go home, the gentleman says."
"I have no home," he quickly answered.
"You hear?" I turned to Cram.
"If he has no home let him go and get one," was the angry retort.
"Therefore he applied to charity," I permitted myself to say.
"This is no place for vagabonds," Cram explained, without looking at me.
"He must have an address so we can send an investigator and see whether
it is a worthy case."
"Well, but if he has no home?"
"Then he cannot obtain charity. This is our rule."
Again Cram fumbled in his desk, gave the man back his application and
wrote on top of it: "Go upstairs."
With a stupid look on his face the man stood with the paper in hand and
did not know what to do or what it all meant. Cram showed him the door.
The man stood stupidly. Cram rang a bell--an office boy came. "Lead him
upstairs," was the order; "he's deaf."
The office boy took the man by the hand. "Come on upstairs," and
jokingly to Cram, "They have spread the table for you there."
Soon I heard his heavy steps on the stairs.
"Will they give him something upstairs?" I inquired.
"They'll give him in the neck," he laughed. "They'll put him out."
"Why don't you help him? The charities are here for that," I said.
"My dear friend, you don't understand this business yet," the
investigator said. "We don't take stock in his deafness. It's a fake, an
old trick."
"Yes, but his certificate proves something, doesn't it?"
"I didn't see it," Cram answered.
"But he wanted to show it to you, did he not?"
"Yes, but I did not want to see it. It's all a fake. Wait, when you have
been in the business long enough you will not speak that way." Again he
fumbled in his desk.
I looked at him. He had eyes, a nose and a mouth--a face--yet he did not
look human to me. What was missing anyway? And as I did not then know
what charities were really for, I thought at that moment:
"This place is for a human being with a big heart, that could feel the
pain of every sufferer--a human being with a desire to help his fellow
creatures--who would speak to him who comes to apply for help words that
would be like balsam, who would feel ashamed that he has a home and
bread to eat while others are walking the streets, hungry and homeless.
Surely 'upstairs' they do not know how this man treats the applicants.
They surely don't know--they don't know."
Presently a young girl, an employee of the office, came to Cram's desk
and said a few words to him. His face lit up and became human, his voice
sounded sweet, and there was so much affection in the look he gave her
that I was astonished. I had just thought of him as a brute. He had just
behaved so to the old man. But as the rays of the sun from the little
window fell on them both it lit my heart with hope. "He is too young--he
will learn the truth in time," I thought.
No sooner had the girl gone away than his face again took on a stony
composure, and when he again called out the name of an applicant his
voice was again harsh and cold as iron.
"Roll--Ida Roll, come here."
A woman, shabbily dressed, with her face almost covered by the big shawl
she wore over her head and shoulders, approached the desk. Cram looked
at her for a few seconds. A tremor passed through the woman's frame at
his scrutiny. She bit her lips and nervously rubbed her hands against
the desk.
"What's your name?"
"Ida Rohl."
Cram made a little mark on the application.
"Where do you live?"
"Madison Street--No.--"
"Where does your brother live?"
"I have no brother."
"Where does your sister live?"
"I have no sister."
"How much does your oldest son earn a week?"
"My oldest son is only thirteen years old."
"What's the name of your husband?"
"My husband is dead."
"When did he die?"
"Four years ago."
"Did you marry again?"
"No, sir."
"Mind you," he warned her, "we are going to investigate and if we find
out that you have married," and he shook his finger in her face.
"How many children have you?"
"Three--the oldest of them is thirteen."
"And how did you live till now without applying to charity?"
"I worked at the machine."
"Why don't you work now?" and turning to me he explained: "You see? Four
years she has worked and supported herself. Now some one has told her
of the existence of the charities, so she does not want to work any
longer. She thinks she has a good case. A widow--three children--and,"
whispering in my ears in a confidential tone, "you'll hear her say soon
that she is sick--sick--that's what they all claim. All are sick."
Meanwhile he cleaned his pipe.
"Well, why don't you answer? Why don't you work now? Tell me--did you
get tired--or do you think begging a better trade?"
"I am sick."
Cram glanced at me as though to say, "You see."
"Sick? and what is your disease? Lazyo-mania?"
"No, I am sick," the woman said, her eyes swimming with tears.
"Sick--what sickness?"
"I am sick. I can't tell you what sickness. I worked at pants--an
operator--and now I am sick. I have pains all over and I can't work. I
can't--I won't mind it for me--but my children go to bed without supper
and go to school without breakfast. And I can't stand it--I can't--I
never applied to charities--"
"Enough, enough," Cram interrupted. "Never applied to charity! I know
that gag. You shouldn't have applied now. A strong woman like you should
be ashamed--ashamed to come here with the other beggars," sweeping his
hand towards the others. "Go to work. You won't get a cent from here."
"But I can't. I am sick."
"Go to a hospital if you can't work."
"And my children?" sobbed the poor mother.
"Well, then, what do you want? A pension of $200 a month, a trip abroad,
a palace, a country house? Say--say quickly what do you want? I have no
time. You will get everything immediately. It's a fine job, Mr. Baer, is
it not?"
"I want to be helped out until I am well enough to work. My children are
hungry. They have had no breakfast to-day and there isn't any supper for
them either."
"That's the real stuff--her children. The more kids, the easier the
money. I tell you, some class to them, my friend."
Cram looked at her and then at the application, and after a moment's
thought he wrote on top of it, in blue pencil:
"To be investigated."
"Go home," he said to the woman.
"But Mr. ----"
"Go home, I say. We'll take care of it. That's all, don't stay here any
longer, don't get me angry."
"But I told you my children are hungry and cold--"
"I am not a groceryman--go home. I have no time. There are others--also
sick and with dead husbands and hungry children. Move on--good-day."
"But, Mr.--to-night my children have no supper and it's bitter cold."
"All right. We'll take care of that. Go home." And as the woman tried to
speak again: "Now go home and don't bother me."
Again he busied himself at the desk. The woman looked at him and then at
me. Big, heavy tears rolled down her careworn cheeks and she seemed to
me the very personification of suffering, the suffering of a mother who
sees her children tortured by gnawing hunger. She went away.
"Will you immediately send an investigator?" I asked Cram.
"In four or five days. Our investigators are very busy now and it's very
cold."
"Four or five days!" I was amazed. "And meanwhile, the children--what
about the poor kids?"
"Oh, well--it's not as terrible as all that. I don't believe all she
said," and again he repeated his favourite sentence: "I don't take any
stock in her story. It's all a fake--a fake."
Many other women and men were called, but I did not see or hear them.
These two were enough. Only the harsh and grating voice of Cram and the
bitter outcry of some applicant awoke me from my stupor.
THE SECOND DAY
On returning home I went to my bed without supper. The whole night
through I heard Cram's questions and the answers of the poor applicants,
and the whole world appeared to me to be like one huge, bleeding wound.
And the question came again and again to my mind: "Was charity,
organised charity, the salve to heal this wound?"
I decided during the night not to accept my new job, but on the
following morning I reconsidered the matter and went to work. "I will
try to have this man Cram discharged," I promised myself. "I will speak
to the Manager about the investigator's brutality. He is too busy
upstairs. He evidently trusts the man and thinks that every one is
treated kindly, humanely." And I explained to myself that the reason
Cram was so cruel, though so young, was because of a few impostors who
tried or succeeded in filching a few dollars from the charities. What
they had to do was to remove him, as he was unfit for his office. It was
the place for a woman, a big-hearted, kind old woman, who has seen much
of life, who has herself perhaps at some time in her life been on the
brink of misery, even compelled to apply herself to charities, and who
would therefore understand the eyes full of tears, the quivering lips,
the cry of the mother for her unfed children. Yes--a woman, a noble
woman, instead of Cram, and everything would be all right, and as I
walked towards the office I reviewed mentally all my acquaintances of
the other sex, trying to place the one fit for the job. None was good
enough, except one who would not accept it, my dear Joanna, with her
silvery hair and the kind big, blue eyes. She had told me of her work in
the Hull House in Chicago and with other charitable organisations in
Boston and elsewhere.
"Friend," she often said, "it's no place for a human being. You see too
much misery, too much pretence, too much darkness." And only a few days
before when I told her about my future position she had advised me not
to take it.
"It will embitter you or it will ruin your soul. A body that has worked
in such a place two years should be backed against a wall and shot in
mercy, because they are disabled for life to feel humanly."
Still thinking of her words I entered the door of the Institution.
The doorkeeper asked me where I was going. "To the office," I explained,
trying to pass, but he was in my way. He insolently put his hands on my
shoulders. "Say--you--where are you hurrying? Wait here."
"I want to see Mr. Lawson," said I, trying to pass.
"You can't see no one; go in the other room and write your application."
I shivered at the thought of the basement and almost forgot that I was
an employee of the institution, when I saw Cram enter the door.
He came up, saluted me and told the man that it was "all right," that I
was a new employee. The doorkeeper touched his cap in respect and
retreated, excusing himself with the words, "I thought it was an
applicant." How horrible this word sounded to me.
"Did you announce yourself to Mr. Lawson?" Cram asked. "Not yet," was my
answer. "You'd better announce yourself to him," Cram advised. "Soon the
applicants will come. We'll have a busy day. It's bitterly cold outside
and on such days they come, oh! they come, they won't give you any
peace, these scoundrels. We can't complain of lack of customers," he
laughed, tapping my shoulder familiarly. "Say, Mr. Baer," he sniggered,
"I'm supposed to be a 'red hot Socialist,' but I must confess that I
hate the applicants. I hate them like hell. They have no manners; they
never go when you tell them. They sit and sit. Oh! I hate them--hate
them," and he grimaced in disgust.
Cram announced me to Mr. Lawson and I was soon called into the office.
He invited me to sit down, asked me about my former occupations and then
explained my work to me:
"Now," he said, "I hope you are aware of the fact that we send out
investigators to investigate all the cases that we get. All our
investigators are women, and women are very softhearted. Besides this we
know that most of their information is not reliable, because they get
the information from the applicants themselves, from their neighbours or
their relatives. Now, the information given by the applicant is
worthless. The neighbour is very often on good terms with the applicant,
and as to their relatives, they always give us only the poor ones, they
never give us the wealthy ones. Now we have six hundred pension cases;
six hundred people that get relief every month for their rent and food.
We want these cases to be re-investigated; the information not to come
from the applicant or neighbours who know that you are an investigator
of the charities. In some way you might find out--posing as a pedlar, as
a health officer, a friend of the family, or any other way you want."
"So," I interrupted, "what you want is a detective," and I intended to
tell him that I was not going to be one, but he quickly assented. "Yes,
we want you to be a detective. You'll do good work. We have a limited
amount of money to spend and if some people get a pension without
exactly needing it they take the money from another family that is
really starving and whom we can't help at all."
This struck me very convincingly. I had no more scruples and I decided
to accept the job.
"We'll give you five names and addresses and you'll have to find out all
the rest yourself. We want to know everything that the family does; who
their relatives are and how much money comes into the house. None of the
investigators should know anything about your work--keep it secret." A
few minutes later he gave me five addresses, and wishing me "good-luck,"
he escorted me to the door.
Once outside I thought the matter over again. I seemed to be stranded in
a treacherous swamp in which I was sinking deeper and deeper, but Mr.
Lawson's argument that those who did not need charity were taking away
the bread of the needy appealed very strongly to me and I made up my
mind to go ahead.
Before starting on my work I entered a coffee house on the lower east
side and tried to warm myself with a cup of coffee. Several times I made
up my mind to send the addresses back with my resignation, but the
argument that the impostor was getting money which should go to the
needy was convincing. It seemed as though I heard Mr. Lawson repeating
it over and over again. His fine blond face full of stern pity. Not the
sentimental pity that lights up the features for a moment, but the pity
of the man who has devoted his whole life to helping the poor. Certainly
Mr. Lawson has no other reason. He wants to repair the evils of our
present system. He cannot cure, he cannot eradicate all the evil, but to
lessen the suffering of the poor is surely a good work. And Mr. Rogers,
that polite gentleman, the Manager. He too is busy all day helping the
poor. Why should I shirk because Cram was not of the right stuff? Thus I
reasoned: "He is not the whole institution. You will explain to the
gentlemen and they will discharge him." I was soon quiet again and out
in the street.
AT WORK
The nearest address was in the lower part of Madison Street. Mary D----,
a widow. The house was one of the typically dirty tenements of that
section. As I entered the hall a strong odour of garlic and onions
almost suffocated me. I rang the janitress' bell. She opened the door
and as soon as I mentioned the name of Mary D. she knew I was from the
charities, for she immediately began to tell me that the D.'s have no
coal, that the charities have neglected them, that the woman is sick and
the five children, the oldest of whom is eleven years old, are hungry
and naked.
"But, my dear lady, I'm not from the charities. I'm a sewing machine
agent," I lied, according to the advice of Mr. Lawson.
"Oh! a new agent? Why, she has just paid $1 last week on the machine,"
and with changed attitude: "What do you bother me for? Go upstairs and
see her--third floor back left." She re-entered her apartment. I walked
up the three floors. At the door I stood a little and thought how I
should behave. "Who's there?" a voice asked. "Sewing machine agent," I
answered, timidly.
"Come next week--I have no money," was the reply. "Excuse me. I can't
open the door for you now. I am not dressed, Mr. George."
I went downstairs and in the hall I noted down everything that the
janitress had told me. Five children, no coal, no food, $11.50 rent, and
so on.
My next address was in Henry Street.
It was one of the coldest days of the winter of 1911. The snow was
knee-deep and the icy wind blew at a terrific speed. The house where I
had to go was one of those old, decrepit buildings, where misery lurks
and peers at one from every door, every brick, windowpane, nail and
knob. The windows were covered with a coat of ice. Some broken panes
were stuffed with pillows and rags. On the ground floor was a grocery.
"They surely buy their provisions here," I thought, and entered the
store. An old woman, the storekeeper, asked me what I wanted.
"Could you give me any information about the family S.," I asked.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, "you are from the Gerry Society, aren't you?"
"Well?" I said nonchalantly. "What of it?"
"Well--it's all a lie, that's what I could tell you. The poor woman
does her best. Why! she works herself to death. A widow with three small
children--a fine woman, a good mother, a real lady, if you want to know.
But her neighbour, the rag pedlar's wife, is jealous. I don't know why!
And she did it. Why should you take away the children from a mother? She
feeds them well. The children haven't good clothes! Well, she is a poor
woman and children are children. They wear, they tear; what can she do?
Buy every day new clothes? A poor widow that works from early morning
till late at night!"
"What is the name of the rag pedlar?" I asked the woman.
"Goldberg," she informed me. "A bad woman, without a mother's heart.
Don't go to her. She'll tell you a lot of bad things about the poor
widow. Don't go to her, Mister. Oh! that such beings should be alive at
all!" she muttered in Yiddish.
"I have to," I assured her, and after inquiring the floor where Mrs.
Goldberg lived I walked up the three flights. I knocked at the door.
"Come in," came the answer. Mrs. Goldberg opened the door, and as I
entered the cheerful aspect of a tidy kitchen and the singing of the
boiling pots on the stove greeted me invitingly. Mrs. Goldberg bade me
enter their "front room," furnished pretentiously. I sat down at her
invitation, and contrary to all rules on such occasions I waited for her
to start the discussion--I hardly knew what to say. I did not have to
wait long. Mrs. Goldberg immediately asked me if I was an agent from the
Gerry Society.
"But what have you against that poor woman? Why do you want her children
taken away? Are you not a mother? Have you no feeling? What is it? Have
you a personal grievance against the woman?" I said in the tone to
invite confidences.
"But just because I am a mother," she snapped back angrily, her eyes
flashing. "Come here," she said, making a sign for me to follow her. I
followed her into a third room. A boy of about six years was in a bed.
His face was burning with fever. Around his neck he had bandages, and on
a small table were a dozen bottles of medicine.
"Well, what has that to do with it?" I queried.
"This is my only child," she explained. I did not understand what
connection there was between her sick child and the desire to put the
children of the other mother away. I told her so, energetically, almost
insolently.
"You see," she explained, "her children are always running around half
naked and barefooted, even in the coldest weather. They are always sick,
but she does not care, because when this is so she runs to all the
charitable societies and gets help and medicine. The children play in
the hall the whole day, and whenever her child has a sore throat three
or four other children catch it. Last year two children caught
diphtheria in this house. Both children died. When my child gets sick _I
have to pay for medicine and the doctor and everything_. If she can't
take care of her children, let her not have any--that's all. Each one
for himself," she added; "I have to take care of my children."
"But," I argued, "are you not a mother? What can the poor woman do?"
Mrs. Goldberg's eyes flashed, and with the assurance well-fed people
generally have, she answered: "Oh! never mind! I would know how to take
care of my children! There would be no charity business with me. Oh, no!
I assure you!"
"She is a widow with small children," I pleaded. "What would you do in
her place?"
"Oh, never mind. I would do something--anything--everything. My child
will always have enough to eat and some clothes, as long as I live," and
as she looked at the sick child she rolled up her sleeves as though
ready to start a fight against the whole world to defend her child from
want and misery.
I departed, first assuring Mrs. Goldberg that something would be done to
"protect her child," and went up another flight to see Mrs. S.
The grocery woman had probably announced the fact that the "Gerry
Society man" was in the house, for as I passed through the hall many a
door opened and closed. Some of the women eyed me as though I were a
murderer, while others looked at me as though I were something
mysterious--a man who had the power of parting children from the mother.
My position was not a very pleasant one. I thought of what I should do
if the real "Gerry Society man" were to appear on the scene. I hastened
towards Mrs. S.'s door. A few old women followed behind me. I knocked. A
timid "Come in." As I opened the door I saw two small children, one
probably six and the other four years old, hiding under the table. My
heart contracted. Mrs. S. stood in front of the table, hiding the
children, her open hands like the claws of a tigress, ready to defend
her offspring. We looked at one another, mutely, for a few moments. Her
eyes were sparkling with the fire of an injured animal, her hair was
dishevelled, her brows were knit together in a supreme decision, her
mouth twitched, and she was pale, pale as a waxen figure. From under
the table the two children looked at me fearfully.
"Are you Mrs. S.?" I finally stammered out, while I took out my
notebook.
No answer.
"Are you Mrs. S.?" I repeated again, as I regained my composure.
"Don't take away my children, Mister. Don't take away my children," the
poor mother yelled and growing hysterical she repeated this terrible cry
in heartrending tones, tearing her hair. "Don't take them away."
The poor tots came out from under the table. Quickly she pushed them
back, and continued to cry at the top of her voice the same sentence:
"Don't take away my children. They are mine, mine. My God, they are
mine."
"I don't want to take your children away, madam," I told her repeatedly.
"Calm yourself, I did not come to take them away." But she did not
listen to me. She kept on crying and tearing her hair. Neighbours came
in from all sides.
"Help, help," Mrs. S. cried. "Help, help, mothers! He wants to take away
my children. Help, help!" and she ran to the window.
I gently laid my hands on the hysterical mother's shoulders, and looking
straight in her eyes I said slowly and distinctly:
"I--don't--want--to--take--your children. Be quiet," I begged. Among
the neighbours was also the grocery woman.
"He wouldn't take away your children. This gentleman comes to speak with
you. Calm yourself, Mrs. S., calm yourself," and softly, in Yiddish, she
blasphemed Mrs. Goldberg and her husband, father and child.
After a few moments, during which the grocery woman spoke to her in
soothing tones, Mrs. S. quieted down a little. A reaction set in. Thick
beads of cold sweat appeared on her brows, while her cheeks flushed with
a sickly red. She asked for a glass of water and sat down. To express
how I felt all this time is more than I can do. I only know that I went
through some faint reflection of all the emotions that agitated the poor
woman. I sat down opposite to her and tried to soothe her. She could not
look me in the face. As I spoke her eyes caressed the two little
children, who, during the excitement, had come out from their hiding
place. They went to their mother. She placed them one on each side of
her and passed her arms around their necks, presenting to me one of the
strongest pictures of motherhood that I had ever seen.
"Well, how do you feel, Mrs. S.?" I broke the silence.
"Just a minute," was her answer, and she ran into the bedroom from where
I heard her sobbing. I took advantage of her absence to ask the other
neighbours to go out. They departed reluctantly and stood outside. I
tried hard to make friends with the children. Not even my pennies would
they accept, and soon they went into the bedroom with their mother--all
sobbing together. I looked around the house. The stove was cold. The
wind blew in from a broken window. A few crumbs of bread were on the
table. A few broken chairs, a big clock, out of order, on the
mantelpiece, a picture of a man of about thirty years old in the centre
of a wall, this constituted most of the furniture. The whole house was
in a state of complete disorder, with not even an attempt at
cleanliness. Through the open door of the bedroom I saw two folding beds
and the torn mattresses shed their straw all around the house. I felt
very uneasy and wished to cut short my visit, but hardly knew how to
back out of my position.
"Mrs. S.," I called, "won't you please come out and talk matters over
with me? I am pressed for time. It's one o'clock and I have other work
to do."
The woman re-entered the kitchen, followed by the children. She had
arranged her hair, put on shoes and buttoned her torn waist.
"Sit down," I urged. She did so.
"Now," I started, "what's the matter with your children? Why are they
walking naked? It is a very cold day and they are liable to fall sick."
"I am a poor widow," she started plaintively, "what can I do?"
"But listen here," I said, "this does not go! The children must be
properly clad."
The woman looked me in the eyes for a few seconds, and then, all of a
sudden, she asked me: "Are you a Jew?"
"Yes," I said, "but what has that to do with it?"
She evidently heard only my acknowledgment that I was a Jew, and with
the feeling that I was her brother she gained confidence that I would
not take her children away from her.
"If you are a Jew," she continued, "you will not take my children away,
and I will tell you the whole truth."
"Go ahead," I encouraged her, and she told me the following:
"Since my husband died three years ago, the charities have given me two
dollars a week and paid my rent. Every year, in the winter, they have
sent me coal and clothing for the children. This year they have a new
investigator and she does not like me."
"The investigator does not like you?" I repeated. "Why?"
The woman looked away for a few moments, then she shrugged her
shoulders and said: "I don't know why. She does not like me and that's
all, so they sent me only a half ton of coal at the beginning of the
winter and no clothes for the children. Every day I went to the office
and asked and begged for coal and clothes, but the investigator does not
like me--she does not like me--and she works against me. So what could I
do? To go and buy shoes and coal I need money, and I haven't any. From
the two dollars a week I get we hardly have enough for bread--dry
bread." And as the poor woman pronounced the last word the smallest of
the children repeated it in tones that would have melted a heart of
stone. His hungry eyes appealed to the mother for the staff of life.
"Bread," the older child repeated. "Mamma, give me bread. I am
hungry--give me bread."
The mother cried. The children were still asking for bread and the
mother was still crying when a young lady, whom I recognised as an
investigator from the charities, entered without even knocking at the
door. Mrs. S. jumped up from her chair, very confused.
"Who is that man?" the investigator asked without even a greeting as she
entered. The woman did not know what to do, what to answer.
"Who are you?" the investigator questioned me insolently.
"By what right do you ask me that?" I replied. "I haven't asked you who
you are."
"Well, I have a right to ask," and turning to the woman, she said: "You
must tell me immediately who this man is--do you hear? Who is he? or no
coal, no money, no rent--do you hear?" She yelled all this, shaking her
jewelled finger in the woman's face. I would have liked to have seen how
far she would have gone, but the eyes of the poor mother were so
appealing, so full of despair, I went up to the investigator and showed
her a paper with the heading of the institution.
"So, you are _it_!"
"Not a word," I said.
"It's all right." She turned to Mrs. S. "I know who he is. It's all
right. Any coal left? No, well, you'll get your coal to-morrow."
"And shoes?" begged the woman.
"Bread, mamma," both children said at once, "ask her for bread, mamma."
This was too much for the well-fed investigator. "Oh, these beggars!
these beggars!" she repeated. "Are you coming down soon?" she asked me,
and without bidding Mrs. S. good-bye she went out, saying, "I'll wait
for you downstairs. I'll have to talk matters over with you."
I assured Mrs. S. that I would do all in my power to prevent her
children being taken from her, and I was soon downstairs, where I found
Miss Alten waiting. We walked some distance together without speaking a
word--just eyeing one another. We passed a lunch room. I asked her to
have a cup of coffee, feeling sure she would refuse. To my great
astonishment she accepted, and soon we were sitting at a table with the
steaming coffee before us. The pleasant warmth of the place and the
steam from the cups soon melted the ice. She was a handsome dark girl of
about twenty, of Jewish-Russian descent. She had a pleasant voice, yet
how harsh and cold was her speech awhile ago, exactly the same voice as
Cram's. I wondered then! not now! Afterward I learned that this was the
_professional tone_, the _intimidating note_, as Cram called it.
"Why did you leave Mrs. S., that poor woman, without coal?" I asked.
"It's so very cold and you know she has no money to buy any!"
"Oh! she's a pest," Miss Alten replied, making a grimace that passed
like an ugly cloud of hatred over her young face. "That was to punish
her, to show her that she must not disregard my authority," she
continued. "Last month she finished the coal. When I came to see her she
told me the story, and I told her she would get it next week. Instead of
waiting, what do you think she did? She came up to the office to beg.
So! I thought, you come to the office. Wait! you'll wait a month before
you get any at all. And that is why it happened. To show her that I am
the boss. We have to have some means of keeping them in order, you
know."
"Yes, but it is not fair to punish her. And for what? She felt cold, so
did the children, and she's a mother. She was afraid of sickness for
them. Why, great God, they could have died." Miss Alten laughed at me
long and scornfully.
"Die, die? Her children die? They never die. They never die. Their
children never die, these beggars."
The coffee was finished. Miss Alten buttoned her coat, put on her
gloves, and saying good-bye she quickly disappeared from the table. I
sat more than an hour, drinking one cup of coffee after another. I
wanted to think but my mind was in confusion. "They never die. They
never die," rang in my ears. And to think that the wages of these women
investigators are seldom higher than ten dollars per week, and that if
somebody did not help them out, a brother, a sister, or father, they
themselves would be depending on charity, or--
"I'll have her discharged, too," I finally decided, and with this
determination I went out again into the street.
Aimlessly I walked through the slums. I had never taken so much
interest in every minute detail of the street as I did at that time.
Every house, every window, every door meant something, said something.
Tales of untold misery and despair and shame. I looked at the clothes of
all the children and tried to guess, figure out, which one's mother was
an applicant and which was not. Unconsciously I had divided the world
into two classes--one that applies to charity and one that does not.
Then I made up my mind that Miss Alten was a relative, perhaps a sister,
of Cram's, and I felt sorry that I had not asked her about it. In our
discussion his name had been mentioned several times, and she had always
affirmed that "he was the finest gentleman and the best investigator of
the whole bunch."
How curious! Two such cruel beings in one charitable institution! I
wondered.
My next case proved a very interesting one. It was in Monroe Street, on
the fifth floor of a yard-house--Mrs. Miriam D.
As nobody around the neighbourhood wanted to tell me anything beyond the
fact that Mrs. D. was a very honest women, I went up to the applicant at
once. The mother was not at home: only her three children, a girl of
twelve, another one of ten and a boy of seven years old were in the
house. They sat, all three, around a table, and worked at their lessons.
The kitchen was very clean and warm. The children were tidy, and
everything was in order. But the poor girls were as pale as death. A
single glance was enough to know that they were starved out. Only in
their big, moist, Jewish eyes was there life. I asked the children where
the mother was. "We don't know," was the response of all three, and they
looked at one another as though to say, "I wish she were here."
From my talk with the children I learned that they were expecting a
cousin by the name of Leb from the old country, so I decided to
impersonate an agent of Ellis Island and get all the information I
wanted in that way. I asked the girls how they were living; whether they
had things to eat every day.
"Yep," the boy of seven said, with pride. "But not enough," added the
oldest sister.
"From where does your mother get money to buy food?" I queried.
"From the Charities," the second girl explained, while the older sister
kicked her in the shins as punishment for her frankness.
"Have you no relatives?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, we have," all three again answered.
"Who are they?"
"Louis Goldman, Uncle Louis," she explained.
"What is your uncle?"
"A shoemaker."
"And who else?"
"Uncle Marcus."
"And what is he?"
"A bum," the little boy put in. "A bum, that's what he is." I had a hard
time to get him out of his sister's hands. They were still trying to
kick him when the mother came in.
Mrs. D. remained at the door in surprise, evidently wondering who I was.
"What do you want?" she questioned.
I was taken by surprise, but I immediately remembered the children's
talk about a cousin from the old country and I said that I was an agent
from Ellis Island.
"Why!" the woman cried out, in ecstasy, "is he here? Oh! children your
cousin is here!" And she kissed them all in an outburst of happiness.
"Is he here? Tell me."
"Who is he?" I asked.
"Oh, I'll go immediately and take him out. It's my cousin, Leb Herman
Rosen, my own cousin."
"All right," I said. "You'll have to give me some information first."
"What information? It's my real cousin."
She sat down ready to answer my questions. I took out my note book and
put the following questions:
"How long are you in America?"
"Eight years."
"How many children have you?"
"Three."
"How long is it since your husband died?"
"Four years."
"Now, if you want to take your cousin in your house you must prove that
you'll be able to support him until he gets work, and show enough money
to assure the United States that he will not become a public charge. How
do you make a living? How much are you earning a week?"
"I--I--I," she stammered, "I make a living."
"How?" I insisted.
"I sell whisky, tea, coffee, powder, toothpaste."
"Well, how much do you make a week?"
"Well, well, I make a living."
"But to keep a cousin you must make more than a living--more than you
need."
"I make more," she said. "I--do make more."
As I knew that she was receiving charity I did not believe her and told
her she would have to prove that she made more than she needed. She
walked up to a chiffonier, searched a drawer, and to my great
astonishment brought forth a bank book which showed that she had one
hundred and thirty-five dollars accumulated in the last two years.
"Will that prove that I earn more than I spend?" she said triumphantly.
I looked at her in astonishment. A mother who lets her children starve
to put money in the bank! What wild animal would neglect its offspring
to such an extent! I called her into the next room and told her what I
thought of her and who I was. She cried bitterly under my lashing, and
then told me the following story:
"I should not tell you this, but as you think that I am an unnatural
mother I must explain myself. My husband died four years ago. He was a
cloak operator and earned good money when I married him. After the
second child was born his wages did not suffice to keep us as well as he
wished. It was a very busy season. He worked overtime every night, until
one and two o'clock in the morning. When the season ended we had three
hundred dollars in the bank. But soon he got sick. Six months he lay
sick at home. When all the money was gone we had to send him to the
hospital. A month later he died, and two months after his death I gave
birth to the third child. While I lay in bed there was nobody to take
care of the children and there was no bread for them either. A neighbour
wrote to the charities and told them all about us, and our plight. Two
days passed. A woman came, looked around, questioned me and went away.
They sent a nurse and money to feed the children. When I was out of bed
they called me to the office and informed me that they had decided to
give me two dollars a week and pay my rent. But, I ask you, could I live
on two dollars a week? I had to do something. I went out washing and
scrubbing floors. I got sick. The charities got to know that I worked.
They immediately informed me that if I worked they would not give me
anything. What could I do? Live on the two dollars? That was an
impossibility. Work? I did not earn enough to get along without their
support. Little by little I began to sell tea and coffee in the hours
when the children were in school. But the investigator was informed by
the grocer and butcher that I spent more than two dollars a week. Again
I was called to the office. They questioned me, tortured me, accused me
of being a bad woman. Where did I get the money? In despair I lied to
them. Told them that the grocer and butcher had given wrong information,
that they did not know; they had no proof and had to give me the
pension.
"Still I could not get along on their money. My children were hungry. I
was hungry. I went out again and sold tea and coffee and whisky, and
under my coat I would bring an additional piece of meat and bread. Soon
the neighbours knew that we had meat every day and some of them told the
investigator. By this time she had made it a habit to spy on my every
move. She reported me to the office. Again I was called and questioned
and again I lied and cried. I could not get along on their two dollars a
week and could not get along on my work alone. But when I got home I was
wiser, and since then, instead of buying bread and meat, I have to put
the money in the bank. This one hundred and thirty-five dollars is the
meat and bread of my children, their health and their life. Yes, I am a
bad mother. I am a bad mother," and wept anew.
The next day I went to the office and gave a report of my work. The case
of Miriam D. I reported more extensively than the others, insisting that
the children were starved while the woman had one hundred and
thirty-five dollars in the bank, accumulated not from surplus but from
what she was forced to deprive her children of. Mr. Lawson immediately
called in the Manager and showed him my report. They congratulated me on
my ability and I felt that they would tell their investigators that they
must not persecute the woman and the orphans by spying. The Manager
pronounced me a second Sherlock Holmes and announced that Mrs. D.'s
pension would be cut off.
I was dumbfounded. So this was the result of my work! To take the bread
out of the mouths of the three orphans. I accused myself of stupidity
and could look no one straight in the face. Through treachery I learned
the truth, and instead of using it for her good I had used it to help
the investigators be more cruel, more questioning than before. What
could the woman do? Had she not told me that she could not live on what
she earned? Was the one hundred and thirty-five dollars enough for her
to support her children? And I imagined them all starved and sick, dying
in hospitals. All through my fault. I should have known that they would
not reform their investigating system because of my report. How I hated
myself. How I hated the whole world. At night when I went home I was
ashamed to kiss my children, for I had committed a crime. As I thought
of the inscriptions on the doors: "For the poor of the land shall never
cease;" "Let thy hand give freely to the needy," etc., I remembered
Dante's "Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate."
In disgust and despair I walked the streets the next day without being
able to do anything. Like a criminal who returns to the scene of his
crime I walked around the house. I felt a strong call to go in and beg
forgiveness for her undoing. I have since learned that it has not done
any harm. On the contrary, deserted by the charities the woman redoubled
her energies. The cousin she was waiting for arrived a few days later,
bringing some money with him. They bought a grocery store and she is
earning her living. But at that moment I thought myself guilty of the
greatest crime. I made many decisions, but stuck to the last, namely, to
take notes of all the evil that organised charity was doing and at the
first opportunity give them out for the benefit of the world.
I understood that the welfare of the poor did not concern the men at the
head of the charity organisation; that it has become a business for
them. A business they were managing, just as others manage factories.
Their concern was to reduce the cost, to economise, just as the
manufacturers try to produce the greatest amount of product with the
smallest amount of outlay. And if hunger, starvation, sickness was the
by-product, well, so much the worse for the poor.
WATCH THEIR MAIL
One morning I received the following order:
"Investigate Sokol, Monroe Street, No. ----. Night visit preferable."
When I asked the Manager what he meant by night visit he told me between
ten and eleven o'clock. Accordingly, at ten P. M. I knocked at the door
of the above named family. In the few minutes that elapsed between the
knocking and the opening of the door I heard a man groaning--as men
groan under excruciating pain.
The woman, Mrs. Sokol, opened the door for me, and inquired who I was. I
was instructed by the office not to tell them my identity under any
circumstances. So I said I was from the Board of Health--that neighbours
had claimed that they could not sleep on account of the man's groans,
and I told Mrs. Sokol that we would have to see him and send him to a
hospital. I entered the apartment. There were two rooms. In one room was
the bed with the sick man in it. The other room was the kitchen, dining
and reception room. A cold stove, a table, four chairs, and on one side
two more folding beds. This was the furniture.
The man kept groaning. His wife whispered to him to keep still, but his
pains were probably so great that he could not understand what she said.
I lit the gas and approached the bed. A strong odour of putrefaction
compelled me to withdraw, and the next moment the wife told me that he
had a cancer, that he had been operated upon several times without
success and that he now suffered the most excruciating pains; that the
doctor came only once in two days, only to have a look--"to see if he is
already dead," as she put it.
"Why don't you send him to the Skin and Cancer Hospital?" I asked.
"We are only two years in this country," was the woman's reply, "and
they will send us back to Russia."
"And the Jewish hospital?" I suggested.
"He has been there twice--they operated on him."
"Well, well," I urged, "why does he not stay there?"
The man groaned, the woman cried, some sick child in the neighbourhood
woke with the noise and mixed his sickly crying with theirs and the
moaning of the wind outside. It was a pitiful scene. I started my
interrogation.
The man was a musician, a fiddler. He was not a member of the Union. He
had been in America two years, and sick from the first moment he had
come. "And how do you get along?" I asked. "From where do you get money
for bread?" Again the woman cried. Soon the man fell asleep. I heard his
heavy breathing and felt the odour of putrefaction emanating from his
body. Pitilessly I insisted on getting an answer to my question: "From
what do you live?"
"There was not a piece of bread in the house to-day," was the answer.
"Yes, but where did you get yesterday's bread?"
"We had no coals for the last four days."
"But from where did you get it before that?" I argued.
"From--from--from the charity," the woman broke down hysterically.
The two folding beds in the kitchen attracted my attention and I asked
her whether she had any boarders. This was the touchstone of her
suffering. We drew our chairs away as far as possible from the sick bed
and there she told me.
"These are not boarders' beds. They are the beds of my two daughters,
Amy eighteen years old and Leah twenty--two daughters have I, like two
flowers. Envied by the whole world. I was the proudest mother. Well,
I'll tell you the whole story.
"Two years ago we, my husband, myself and the two daughters, arrived
here from Warsaw. My husband was a healthy, strong man. My daughters
were dressmakers. We had a little money. We rented these same two rooms
and a few days afterward, through the influence of friends, both
children found work at their trade. Only my husband remained idle. They
did not want to take him into the Union. A few weeks he walked around
without work, then he went to a leather finding factory where he had to
cut out pieces of leather. It was piecework. They worked in a cellar,
sixteen or eighteen hours a day. At the end of the week he had two
dollars. It was very hard on him. He had never done physical work, still
he returned there the next week, hoping that he would do better, having
a week's experience. He went away at five in the morning and returned at
eleven at night, yet he could not make more than forty cents a day.
"His daughters made the first week six dollars each, working nine hours
a day, and he, the father, working twice as hard and twice as many hours
made two dollars a week. He took sick. We called the doctor. He gave a
potion and left. My husband got worse and worse every day. We went to a
hospital. There it was found that he had cancer, and must be operated
on. But just as we were ready to go and do it we found out that there is
a law that we had no right to use a public hospital before we have been
here five years. We applied to the Jewish hospital. My husband was
operated upon.
"My daughters worked. On account of the illness of their father they had
no opportunity to buy clothes, American clothes. They were still in
their greenhorn dresses, and the whole shop made fun of them. They
simply had to buy clothes. The money we brought here was long since
gone, so when their father was brought home after the first operation
there wasn't a penny in the house. The visiting doctor gave me a letter
to the charities and told me that they would help me. I went there. I
don't want to tell you through what I went at their hands. Enough to say
that when I came home I felt as though I had committed the greatest sin.
I felt guilty towards myself. I felt like a criminal awaiting his day of
judgment.
"Finally the investigator, a young lady, came. She saw my daughters.
They were neatly dressed, and as young girls generally are, they thought
of their own life, were gay and healthy. The investigator started to
examine them and after every answer she tried to confuse them and prove
that they lied. She stayed a half hour. When she left the poor children
were as pale as death--a terrible gloom had settled upon them--as though
death itself had visited our shelter.
"From then on we had no repose. They helped us with a few dollars, but
every other day some one else inquired about us--at the neighbours--at
the grocer--butcher. They visited us at all hours of the day and night.
Sometimes when we had visitors the investigator would question them,
until all our friends have left us. They followed the poor children to
their work and went to take information from the employer. On one
occasion, when the girls struck together with the other workers of the
shop the boss cried out to my girls: 'I'll show you! When the charity
will come I'll give such information that you wouldn't get a cent.' This
was too much for the poor children. They came home, packed their
belongings--and--" Here the poor woman broke out in hysterical weeping,
approaching the two empty beds, and cried: "My house is empty. Cursed be
the hour when I applied to charity. I should have gone out begging in
the street."
And as I slipped out of the house the cry of the woman pursued me.
"Cursed--Cursed be the hour that I applied to charity!"
I reported the next day the situation of the family and urged immediate
relief. The Manager called me into his sanctum and told me that my
information was not complete, since I had not learned where the
daughters were. "I am sure," he said, "that she knows where they are.
You must get it out of her."
"All right," I said, "but in the meantime send them relief. There is no
coal, no bread."
"Are you sure?" he asked. I assured him of the fact.
"Then it's all right," and he rubbed his hands with great satisfaction.
"It's all right," he repeated. "We'll break her stubbornness, all right.
We'll get their address now. So they have no bread, eh?"
Cries from the waiting room came to my ears, as though a chorus of those
unfortunate beings would blaspheme all together: "Cursed be the hour
when we applied to charity--cursed--cursed--cursed."
We were interrupted by some one else coming in on some business.
I felt my head swimming and I looked longingly outside through the large
window over the Manager's desk. A little bird flew around the sill, and
hungry, she tried to pick the putty from around the pane. Mr. Rogers
probably followed my wandering gaze for he was soon standing near me
and having also remarked the little bird he exclaimed: "Poor little
thing, is it not pitiful? Hungry and cold!" So saying he opened the
window and invited the bird to enter. Yet the bird preferred to remain
outside.
Mr. Lawson was called in and a conference took place as to how to force
Mrs. Sokol to give the address of her children.
"But do you suppose that she has sold her children for immoral purposes
that you are so anxious to learn their whereabouts?"
"No, we don't suppose _that_," Mr. Rogers answered, "but when we give
them money we want to know everything, you understand, everything. Here
she has two daughters and she keeps their address a secret! Whatever we
have done was of no avail. We must curb her. Isn't that so, Mr. Lawson?
We must show her that she cannot keep secrets from us. What would you
suggest, Mr. Baer?"
I had nothing to say.
Mr. Lawson twisted his little blond moustache awhile, then he suddenly
exclaimed joyfully, as Archimedes cried, "Eureka" when he discovered the
law of specific gravity: "Watch their mail!"
"They certainly get mail from the girls. Let Mr. Baer watch their mail
and get one of their letters, and that will solve the whole thing."
The manager pronounced it a splendid idea and I was instructed
accordingly. I went up to see Mr. Sokol a few times and reported that
they got no mail. One morning, while visiting them, I found that the man
had died over night. Among the mourners were two beautiful, pale girls.
The daughters of the old couple.
I reported the occurrence at the office. Mr. Lawson called me to his
room.
"So he died? He died?" he repeated. "We will send her to the old
people's asylum. That will save rent. But you saw the girls, did you?"
"Yes."
"What's their address? Did you find out?"
"I could not ask their address in such a moment," I retorted.
"It's a mistake, an awful mistake, Mr. Baer," he censured me. "It was
the best occasion. You should have taken advantage of the moment. Please
return to the house and get their address," he instructed, as he led me
to the door.
From the hall I ran out into the street. I wanted fresh air--air and
space. And this same Mr. Lawson almost cried when his wife's pet dog
died. And Mr. Rogers pitied the poor little bird that picked the putty
off the sill. And at charity conventions, when he had to appeal for
funds, he almost shed tears about "our unfortunate brothers and
sisters." Now they advise, when the father lay dead on the floor: "It
was the best occasion. You should have taken advantage of the moment."
Would a criminal be treated in this way during the third degree?
The woman died a month after, in a hospital. Hunger and privation of all
sorts had undermined her strength. _Charity had killed them both._
THE ROLLER SKATES
"Investigate Mrs. B., 124th Street, No. --. Investigator reports woman
never home. Questions morality. Urgent. W. L."
I found this slip on my desk one fine morning. An hour after I was at
the given address. The door was locked. No one was at home. Inquiry at
the neighbours informed me that I would have to wait until three o'clock
when the children came from school.
"And Mrs. B.? When does she come?" I asked.
"When the children come from school," I was answered.
Consequently I had to remain in the neighbourhood. New York's climate is
very fit for a cosmopolitan city. Just as the men of the South dwell in
the neighbourhood of the Northern, the Italian near the Norwegian and
the Spaniard in the same building with the Russian, so does the winter
live near the summer, the spring next to the autumn. One day a
snowstorm, the next day it rains. You put on the heaviest clothes one
morning and come home with your waistcoat on your arm, so to speak. Here
in the middle of winter, the second half of January, I had gone out with
a heavy winter coat and at one o'clock it looked more like the end of
May than winter. I walked up to Central Park to spend my time until
3 P. M. The squirrels had left their hiding places and were dancing to
and fro to replenish their reserve store of food. The little birds flew
and sang merrily. The children of the well to do, watched by the
ever-following servants, played with the caged prairie dogs, the goats
and other animals of the Park Zoo. Around the monkey cage the people of
the suburbs and more distant towns and villages were watching and
enjoying the antics of our gay ancestors. The lions roared, the tiger
groaned, and that money-saving elephant rang the bell every time some
one put a cent in his big snout. This was the only thing he had learned
from men--save money. I don't know why, but one forgets himself so
easily in the neighbourhood of children, farmers and wild animals. I had
not noticed how time passed and stood in the Zoo more than the required
time. I had completely forgotten my mission. But some one inquired the
time from the keeper. I heard his answer and ran.
In 124th Street again.
The children are out of school. The street has taken on life. Girls are
jumping the rope and the boys have taken out their skates and glide
gracefully up and down the sidewalk. Their faces are red, their eyes are
brilliant and their arms swing to and fro to keep their balance. In an
empty lot a group of Jewish boys fight it out with some Irish
youngsters. On another lot another group of Irish and Jewish boys play
base-ball.
I ring the bell of Mrs. B.'s home. No answer. I inquire of the
neighbour. "Are the B.'s home?"
"The children are back from school and are probably out in the street,
the little loafers." She closed up. I would like to speak with her
further, so I knock at the door.
"Excuse me for inconveniencing you, madam, but could you tell me when
Mrs. B. will be home--whether she is at home in the morning?"
"I could not tell you, sir."
"Does she go out to work?"
"I don't know--I don't care. Ask some one else. Every day another bother
about the poor woman. I am tired of answering. The charity again?"
"No, no," I assured her. "I have some other business with her. I am an
old friend from the time her husband was yet alive."
"She'll soon be in. She is probably talking with a neighbour. Wait;
I'll go and ask the boy. He must be near the house."
Presently she put a shawl over her shoulders, gave a last look to the
boiling pots, covered one, took another off, and was soon with me in the
street. She looked to the right and left, asked the grocer and butcher,
and finished by calling down the street: "Mike! Mike! Where are you,
loafer?" She soon distinguished him among the other boys and pointed him
out to me. He was standing with his back to us watching the other boys
as they glided on their skates.
"Mike, Mike!" the woman called, but the boy was too engrossed to hear
her. Together we walked up to him. "That gentleman wants to see your
mother, you loafer," the woman introduced him, and went her way. A boy
of twelve years old, who looked like one of eight by his physique, and
like an old man by his wrinkled and worn-out look. Pale, stooping, with
a little nervous twitch around the lips and a short tearing cough as he
spoke. This told the tale of his misery.
"What do you want?" he asked me angrily.
"Come into the house," I answered, and putting a hand on his shoulder I
signed him to follow me.
"I want to stay here," the boy said, and with a jerk he freed himself
from my hand. "I want to watch the boys play--run on the skates," and
he turned away to watch one particularly able boy as he made fancy
figures with his feet.
"Where are your skates, Mike?" I questioned.
"I have none. What's it your business?"
From the empty lot flew a ball. Mike caught it and was about to throw it
back when one of the boys called out:
"Hi, Hi, Mike--charity kid--hurry up. Throw the ball here. Hurry up."
Angry, Mike threw the ball in the opposite direction and flashed back a
short sentence that gave his opinion about his insulter. A fist fight
was the result and the poor lad would have gotten the worst of it had
not his mother suddenly appeared from behind, and hitting the aggressor
and the child she separated them and took her son home. He wriggled as
though he wanted to go back to fight, but his mother had him well in
hand. I followed them. At the entrance of the hall I waited a few
minutes before knocking at the door, listening. The mother scolded, the
boy cried and a little girl's voice pacified.
"Come in."
"Mrs. B.?" I inquired.
"Yes, sir," the woman answered, and as she spoke she removed her coat
and rubbers.
About thirty, care-ploughed face, weak eyes, colourless lips, stooped,
narrow, short of breath.
"What is it you want, sir?"
"Could we go into another room or would you send the children out so we
can talk at our ease, Mrs. B.?"
The woman thought for awhile, then she beckoned to the children, who
went into another room. I came straight to the point. I claimed that I
was from the Gerry Society and that the children were not well taken
care of.
"Where are you the whole day? You leave the children on the street,
their shoes are torn, their clothes not suitable to the season--they are
hungry, dirty."
The woman cried, whined. She was a poor widow. Charities gave her too
little and all the rest of the story that I expected.
"But where are you the whole day long and late at night?" I insisted.
She gave a thousand explanations, none of which were true. The last one
was that she went to neighbours in order to save coal. At this point the
boy came out from the other room. He looked determined, and he had a
little book folded in his hand.
"Mamma lies. She goes out for business. She sells laces and curtains."
"Shut up--shut up!" She sprang from her chair. I interfered. "Let the
boy alone."
"Mamma lies," the boy continued, and showed me the bank book. I opened
it and saw that the balance was almost five hundred dollars.
"What is this?" I asked. "Five hundred dollars in the bank and your
children hungry and naked?"
The woman looked like a criminal before the bar. The boy explained.
"It's not her fault, Mister. It's the fault of the ladies from the
charities. They come here and bother every day. She can't buy anything,
not even meat every day. She has to put the money in the bank. She has
promised that when we move out she will buy me a pair of skates like all
the other boys and girls have. Now she has enough money. Let her move
away from here to a place where nobody knows us. I don't want to be
called 'charity kid' any longer. I want roller skates. I want to move, I
want new pants, I want meat every day. I don't want to be called charity
kid any longer, and that's all."
The mother looked at her son and cried. The little girl hid in a corner.
The boy had finished. His nerves gave out and he too cried. A few
moments I looked at them and thought again of the poor wretches who are
in the clutches of organised charity, the mother that starved her
children because she dared not buy meat, because she dared not dress
them. In four years she had saved five hundred dollars. Just the price
of meat for every day of the year. A little more bread and fruit. She
certainly had saved with an object in view. To save herself. And all the
time the children knew that she had the price of food. The boy, longing
for childish pleasures, roller skates, which the mother dared not buy
because of the investigator's "Where did you get the money?" The bad
neighbour, for whom the poor woman may not have wanted to wash the
floor, would call in the "Lady" and tell her: "They have meat every day.
The children have pennies, and now they have skates too." And the "Lady"
would question, torture, menace, call names, insult. Ah! I knew the
whole game now. Knew it only too well. That little room at the top of
which is the sign "Investigator." I knew how they went in there. Knew
how they came out. No, it was not her fault.
"Here, Mrs. B.--your bank book. I am not from the Gerry Society. I am
from the charities."
The woman trembled. The boy looked at me.
"When does your month finish here?"
"On the first."
"Move away from here, woman, move away. It's your last chance to save
yourself. Move away and earn your living. You will not get a cent from
the charities, and that boy must not be touched. You are to let him
alone or I will take him away from you. Good-night."
I ran out. At home a party of friends awaited me. We were to go and hear
music. I could not. I wanted to drink. I stayed at home and drank brandy
until I fell asleep. I drank and swore until I slept.
The next morning when I had to make out my report I excused myself,
saying that I had to continue my investigation as I had more information
to gather. In reality it was to give me time to think out what to say
and what not to say. The next day I made out a report, simply saying
that I had found out the woman Mrs. B. had five hundred dollars in the
German Bank, Book No. 8..., that she does business in curtains; and
advised them to cut her off immediately. The Manager did not believe
what I said and consequently 'phoned to the bank, which corroborated my
statement. Immediately the investigators were called in, and in firm
tones the Manager lectured them on their tender-heartedness with
applicants. He told them that they must make their investigations in a
more thorough manner, otherwise they would lose their positions. Stupid
fool that I was. Whenever I wanted to do good I only made the poor
suffer more.
Promptly on the first of the next month I was in 124th Street. Mrs. B.
had moved a few days before. Through the Express Company I got her
address, way up in the Bronx. I went there, on Washington Avenue. I saw
the boy and girl in new clothes and on roller skates.
"Hullo," I greeted them. They both became pale.
"Where do you live now, children?"
The boy thought a moment and then he hissed out between his teeth: "What
in hell is it your business, now? We don't get any more money from you.
What do you come to bother us here for? We don't want you. We have got
enough of your dirty business."
"Listen," I told him: "I don't want to bother you any more, but tell me,
have you bread and meat every day now?"
"Meat and candies and butter and everything, and mamma has a million in
the bank and that's all, and don't come to bother us. We are no more
'charity kids.' For God's sake can't you leave us alone?"
"Good luck to you." I turned around and disappeared as quickly as
possible.
THE TEST
In the boiler factories they submit the boiler to a test of resistance.
The engine is subjected to a pressure three or four times stronger than
the one it will have to withstand in the ordinary run of work. If
successful it is sent out to the market guaranteed by the factory. If
not, it is made over. The weak points are strengthened, and in most
cases it is put away to be entirely recast.
For boilers and engines this may be a good system of control, though
many an engineer maintains that the over-pressure weakens the machine
for ordinary use.
To use such a system with men, women and children is barbarous, to say
the least. The Inquisition had such a system--the Question Chamber. It
is a well-known fact that persons put to the "Question" often admitted
things which in reality they had never said or done. Most of the time
they, the tortured ones, knew that to admit these things meant death,
the hangman or the auto da fé. Still, when they confessed, the torture
ceased for the moment. This they called "The Test." Not one in a
thousand could maintain his will power when the test was applied. It
went on in crescendo as the hours passed by and the man or woman did not
"respond." It was up to the man doing the work to devise such means as
would loosen the tongue, break the will. The hangman himself was
punished for not getting at the truth, or was praised by his superior
for his success. Torquemada called a particular man from Madrid to
accompany him to Grenada, as he alone knew how to apply the "Test" to
the glory of the Almighty and of Jesus Christ. This man had perfected
himself in the art of torturing. I am not certain whether this is the
man who is spoken of in connection with the "Question" of a certain
gentleman which had to be put off because the "_real one_" at the bench
had a terrible toothache that day.
But the "Test" is applied to-day. Applied to the poor by organised
charity. Applied systematically, methodically and in crescendo; and like
the "real one" wanted by Torquemada there are real ones in the offices
of the Charity Institutions.
This is how it is done.
A family is pensioned by the organisation. Three or four years the
family has received regularly two dollars a week and the rent and coals
for the winter. Then all at once, generally early in the winter, the
order to apply the "Test" is given. The family is visited three or four
times in a week. The children are followed to and from their work. The
neighbours are adroitly asked about the family. Every one visiting the
family and surprised by the investigator is questioned: "Are you the
brother of Mrs. B.?" "Are you her husband? Are you her boarder?" If this
does not bring results the coal is cut off, to see whether the family
cannot succeed in raising money for coal. If this is not successful the
allowance is discontinued for a few weeks. This naturally brings the
woman to the office. She is not allowed to see the Manager. For several
days this is continued, then the question is put: What is she doing at
night? Where does she go during the day? Whence does she get the
necessary additional money? If she is a stubborn subject and resists all
this, then the rent is cut off. The landlord waits a few days. The woman
runs to the office. "What shall I do?" "We have no money; help
yourself," she is told. In a few days the "furniture," two broken
chairs, a limping table and a mattress, are put out in the street. In
the cold, in the snow, the children are huddled up in rags, between the
table and the stove and the picture of Washington. On top of the bundle
of bedding is a saucer in which some passersby have thrown a few cents.
Sometimes, in a case like this, some distant, poor relative, or some one
with whom the family had connections, steps in and gives them a helping
hand. Then, the test being successful, the woman is cut off the pension
list. She has helped herself.
At other times, there being no one to help, the applicant makes such a
row that he is restored to the list with a cross after his name denoting
bad behaviour. On another occasion he will again be tried.
Sometimes the woman comes running and begs that her rent be paid. She
will attend to the rest. She will sell newspapers, matches. She will
scrub floors. She will send her twelve year old daughter to work.
"You can't do that. She is not of age."
"Yes, she is."
"According to our records she is only twelve years old."
"I lied, then. She is fourteen. Only pay my rent. I can't stay in the
street."
The "Test" has been partially successful. Pension and coal supply is cut
off. Only the rent is paid. A little girl is sent to an early grave.
I remember one case where the coalman, an old Italian, had pity and gave
the coal on credit. When the investigator asked him why he did so he
answered angrily, "Not your business." A report was made in regard to
the immoral relations between the poor widow and the old Italian. It was
but natural that a certain friendship should be established between the
widow and her benefactor. She repaired his clothes, and when the
allowance was cut off he divided his bread with her. No amount of
explanation could convince the investigator that the woman was not
proven to be immoral by this fact.
"Why is she so friendly with the coalman?"
"Because she is cold and he gives her coals."
"Why does he give her coals?"
"Because you don't send her any."
Then the investigator would answer triumphantly:
"If she were an honest woman she would stand the test. She would suffer
cold and hunger." Then she would remember that last summer the woman had
a new dress that she could not account for and once there was a piece of
chicken in her pot. She evidently got it from the butcher for her good
offices. The poor have no business to eat chicken. It is the old
question of the Southern negro. He is not allowed to engage in other
trades than cooking and shoe shining, and when you discuss this with a
Southern gentleman he proves to you that the negro is an inferior being
from the fact that he does not work at anything but these trades. You
cut off the supply of coal in the dead of winter, and when the woman
obtains it from the coalman it is a proof that she is dishonest--that
they are "all alike." It is true that many of them would give their
bodies for a bucket of coal or a piece of meat when they are hungry and
cold. Many of them have admitted crimes that they have never committed
under stress. But what does that prove?
One young widow with a two year old child when submitted to the test
twice in one year was taken in by a "Madame" of a house of ill-fame in
the neighbourhood. She left the few broken chairs and the table on the
sidewalk and went there in the capacity of cook. I found her there. She
was glad of the change. "But it is an immoral house," I argued. "It's
better than to be at the mercy of the investigator and the office," was
her answer. A few weeks later she had given away her child and was a
regular inmate of the house, and still glad of the change, and thankful
to the woman who had taken her in. But the report of the investigator,
both to the charity institution and the Sisterhood, reads: "Mrs. K.
always led a life of shame and all my work was unsuccessful. When put to
the test she went to a disreputable house and has of late abandoned her
own child." The Sisterhood used their influence and had the house raided
a few times and all the women arrested, Mrs. K. among them. The
"madame" was expressly told that she was being persecuted on account of
the woman she had taken in. When Mrs. K. had finished her sentence in
prison she found the door of the house closed to her. Fourteenth Street
is free. I spoke to her. She is still glad of the change. Such are the
results of the "Test."
It is not those who do not receive charity--the poor who have to go
without--who are to be pitied, but those who are in the clutches of
charity. They should be helped, saved. They are the greatest sufferers.
Under the cloak of charity men and women are tortured. Each piece of
bread is scalded with tears and pains, and if another Napoleon should
arise there is a job waiting for him--to burn down the modern
Inquisition, destroy the torture chamber, abolish the "Question," the
"Test," to save the poor from organised charity.
No wonder that the situation is such a horrible one, when you consider
the general mentality of the people supposed to work for the
amelioration of the suffering poor. Who are they? Have they the interest
of the poor at heart, or do they consider first their own job? Does any
one of them start his daily work with a thought of the poor, with a
charitable thought? Not at all. His only occupation is how to please
his superior, how to show a good record, so that his own bread is
assured. The poor are stepping stones, a climbing ladder towards
promotion, social influence, recognition. Incidentally some of the
applicants get a few dollars a week, but they are not the real objective
point.
It reminds me of Colonel Sellers in Mark Twain's story. He proposes a
partnership to a young man for the manufacture of a certain eye-water, a
special preparation to heal sore eyes, and when the young man becomes
enthusiastic about it--he will heal sores!--Colonel Sellers tells him:
"This is not the object, my boy. From the first fifty thousand bottles
we sell we open another branch in Calcutta or Bombay--there are millions
of sufferers there." Again the young man thinks of the good work, but
Colonel Sellers continues: "And from there we establish warehouses in
Alexandria, Smyrna and Buenos Ayres, twenty million bottles a year is
our output, with a net profit of two hundred thousand dollars a year."
By this time the young man too has been influenced to look away from the
real object, the sick, the sufferers. Two hundred thousand dollars a
year is a good prize. But Twain had something in his sleeve and Colonel
Sellers delivers his last blow.
"Do you think that a man like me would be satisfied with a paltry two
hundred thousand dollars a year? There's millions in it, my dear boy."
The real business now only begins. "We will form a stock company with a
capital of twenty-five million dollars, etc., etc."
This was the real business. The sick and poor and the medicine were only
an incident, a necessary ingredient to the whole scheme to give it an
appearance of something. There are enough Colonel Sellers in the charity
institutions. They are there only for a fraction of time before they get
the real thing--before they form the stock company. Incidentally the
sore eye preparation, namely, the poor, play a rôle.
The charity institution--it is the Stock Exchange of suffering.
I have just described one form of the "Test." When I once spoke about it
to some one who has been connected with another one of these
institutions for years, expecting him to be horrified, he simply took a
note of the details in his book. "And how does it work?" he asked me. I
explained that a good many, driven to the brink, have squirmed out by
some by-path, while others shift for themselves as best they can.
"Well, well," he thought aloud, "I'll have to try it myself." And
incidentally I learned a good many other tricks of the trade, as he
called them, from him.
"There was one particular woman," he told me, "whose mouth I had to
open with my fist so that she would tell us where her boy was. He had
run away from the place we had found for him. We wanted him to learn a
trade and a glassblower gave him a chance. But the boy would not stay
with his boss. I argued and argued and argued. He did not like the
trade, he told me, but in reality it was work he did not like. The last
time he ran away I decided that it was about time to show my authority
and I found a reason to have him arrested. The mother having told me
that he had not given her his pay I wanted her to get a warrant issued
and put him away for a few months in a house of correction, just to
teach him a good lesson, but the mother would not tell me where he was.
When I saw that I could not make her say anything by persuasion--well, I
had to use force."
"What of the boy?" I inquired.
"He was no good. He was six months in the house of correction, but it
did not help. He is now a gang leader of very bad reputation," he
finished, with devout eyes. This stupid ass in charge of the poor, _who
walks six miles to get a certain brand of cigar, would not understand
that a boy may not like one trade and be very willing to learn another_.
This spiritual hog wanted to show his authority by compelling a mother
to give up her child to gaolers--used force to do it--to the Glory of
the Almighty and Jesus Christ. And he wondered that his "case" had
become a gang leader! I wonder that the boy did not repay him for his
splendid service to humanity.
SCABS
In C---- in 1910 thousands of workers in the clothing industry struck
for better wages. They were mostly newly-arrived immigrants, all of them
skilled workingmen, and though the manufacturers were making millions
and advertised that they employed only the best skilled labour, the
workers, men and women, and their families, starved.
A shameful system of task work was established, whereby contractors
sublet their work to sub-contractors, and these to other contractors,
and the workers were kept at piece work. Many of them worked from
six A. M. until midnight, in dirty, dingy sweatshops and at the end of
the week they received seven or eight dollars. Even this small sum was
not assured. It happened more than once that the sub-contractor, for
whom the men worked, simply disappeared with the pay of all the men. As
they were not engaged by the firm they could not ask the manufacturer to
pay them, and had to go hungry, they, their wives and their children.
Such conditions lasted a good many years, until at last, in 1910, the
men organised and struck to abolish the sub-contracting system and the
piece work which led to it. The men struck for a minimum wage, a fixed
working hour and sanitary factory conditions. They also wanted to know
for whom they were working. To obtain such necessary and elementary
rights they were compelled to stay out several months, entailing great
suffering from hunger and cold.
In every strike the manufacturers use strike-breakers. Sometimes, in
America, the students of the colleges go to scab, to protect the right
of _free labour_, they claim. In the clothing industry skilled workers
are used. The students could not execute the work, and among the skilled
tailors there was not one mean enough to scab.
Each charity institution also keeps an employment bureau. The men and
women they send to work are always paid the most wretched wages, and
they work to the last notch of their endurance. For work that has
hitherto been paid twelve dollars per week the man who comes recommended
by the charities receives not more than six dollars. Of him twice as
much work is expected. He is not supposed to lift his head or speak or
smile. He must always look humble, wretched, submissive. He must make it
appear that his work is worth much less than he gets. He must look to
his employer as to the Saviour, because he has been sent by the
charities. The fact that he appealed to the charities is a proof that he
is a failure, also a proof that the man has nothing to depend upon; no
brother, sister or friend that could help. The employers demanding help
from the employment office are all "subscribers"--they contribute a
certain sum to the institution. For this and other services rendered,
they are given a little white plate with black letters to nail on the
door, which reads: "Member of organised charity." This acts like a
talisman. It drives away the hungry and needy.
If you were to stay a half hour in the private sanctum of the manager of
the bureau you would hear such telephonic conversation:
"Is this Mr. So and So?"
"How is our man getting on?"
"Well, if he does not suit you we'll send you another one."
"We have plenty of schnorrers (beggars) around here."
"That's how they all are--lazy. They want money, not work."
Five minutes later another man is sent. The employment office is not for
the benefit of the poor, but to be of service to the rich, to lower the
pride of the workingman. During the strike of the cloak makers the
telephone of the bureau was continually ringing. The manufacturers
demanded help. When any one applied for charity the first question put
was: "Are you a tailor?" And they did not believe the man or woman who
said "No." If they discovered a tailor there was rejoicing in the
Institution and Mr. X. or Mr. Z., a clothing manufacturer, was called up
and told the glad tidings. "We are sending you a man."
Thus does organised charity work to break a strike of men who are
demanding living wages; a strike where the poor suffer so that their
children may live a decent life.
The records of the institution were looked up, and every man and woman
who was thought to have had a connection with the needle at any time of
his life, or who could operate a sewing machine, was singled out and the
order to "cut off" was given. A few days later, men old and broken, sick
and worn out women and consumptive girls, were thronging the halls of
the institution. They cried and begged and showed handkerchiefs red with
the blood of their wounded lungs. There they were with their swollen
eyes and hands crippled from the toil of former years. But like the herd
of cattle from the slaughter-house, serving only one purpose as far as
the man with the long knife is concerned, so were they all, slowly but
surely, driven upstairs to the employment office, from where they were
escorted to the shops, to finish their days slaving at the machine to
enrich the donors of the institution and help in the good work of
starving into submission their brothers and sisters on strike for living
wages.
When I protested and asked why this was done they said:
"Is this institution kept up by the poor, by the workingman, or by the
donations of the rich manufacturers?" And then again I asked:
"But _for whom_ is it kept up?" to which I was answered by sneers and
shrugs and laughter.
And the thousands of workers knew not from where these poor starved men
came and they fought against them and blood was spilled--blood that
otherwise trickled slowly away on the handkerchiefs, on the waste, and
was wiped off the mouth with the linen from which garments were
manufactured.
When the strike was at an end and the victorious workingmen returned to
their places, the scabs were sent away. Again they were restored to the
pension list or sent to the sanatorium, but in a few months, when the
leaves began to fall from the trees, the list was reduced to half--men
and women had gone to their graves.
But the charity institutions had their subscription list increased, for
the rich had learned to know what a strong support they had in
organised pity. Walk now through the clothing district of a city, and
on each and every door you will see the white enamel sign, with black
letters: "Members of the organised charities." It is written with
blood--with the same red, bloody letters in which the sign of the house
on the road is written:
"Ye poor of the land come and warm your bodies."
Only, instead of the stove, there is a sewing machine, a pressing iron,
a drilling machine, and the devil laughs and laughs and shows his white
teeth.
"Has ever man built a better place for me!"
SAVING HIM
In the waiting room I noticed a man who came a few days consecutively.
Somehow he impressed me as outside the class of people that apply for
charity. Though he had passed the basement ordeal and had to get through
with the waiting room lesson there still was a look of independence in
his eyes.
He never spoke to the other applicants; he never sat on the benches
reserved for them. More than once the office boy and other employees had
told him to sit down, in an imperative tone. At such an admonition he
would retreat to a corner with a bitter smile on his lips and view the
whole thing as a passing ordeal through which he had to go.
He impressed me with his indomitable look, with his high forehead and
the deep serious lines carved on his face. He was also very much
interested in the doings of the office and I often thought that he was
trying to get the sense of this hustling and bustling around him.
One day he appeared to be very nervous. A look of desperate
determination was in his eyes as he came in. Instead of going to the
waiting room he sought to enter the sanctum sanctorum of the Manager and
get an explanation of some sort from him. Repeatedly he inquired of the
boys how he could reach that high person. With a shrug of the shoulders
the boys passed him by without replying to his questions. Others
admonished him to go to the waiting room.
I approached him and asked him what he wanted.
"I want to see the Manager," he answered. "For the last five days I have
been coming here. I have made an application eight days ago and have had
no answer. Now," he said, "I have not applied to charity eight days
before I needed it. It is my last resource. I can't find any work. I'm a
tailor. During the season I have been sick, otherwise I would have saved
up for slack times. My wife has borne me a child two weeks ago and my
landlord threatens to put us out."
He used better English than the average workman and he was so dignified
in his appeal, as if he considered that the charity owed him help when
in distress. I told him that I would try to arrange that he see the
Manager as soon as possible. I, so to speak, cleared the path for him.
He was intercepted by Mr. Lawson, who in his cold voice asked him what
he wanted. The man explained his situation. He did not cry; he did not
whine. In simple words he said what he had to say. Mr. Lawson looked at
him with his piercing grey eyes. He seemed very interested in the man.
His dignity was so impressive, so manly. As he finished his tale Mr.
Lawson put his hand on the man's shoulder and dismissed him with very
kind words, saying that they would attend to it as soon as possible.
The man went away thanking him. I saw Mr. Lawson searching on his desk
and soon he had the man's application. He studied it in all its details.
All of a sudden he said to me: "You saw this man? I'm going to save him.
I am sure that everything he told is true, and I'm going to save him.
Such men should be saved. They are of a better kind and we are going to
save him from the degradation of the waiting room and association with
the derelicts--our regular customers."
"How much are you going to give him?" I asked, and at this moment I
thought very highly of Mr. Lawson. For such is human nature--excuse all
bad acts for a single good one.
"How much are we going to give him?" the gentleman repeated in an
astonished voice that had a tinge of sarcasm in it. "We are not going to
give him _anything_. Such men must be saved from pauperism. If we should
give him something he'd be lost. I want to save him; do you understand,
_save him_. I will give orders not to let him in the hall at all the
next time he comes."
As I went out I had in my mind a new interpretation of Christ's
crucifixion. Pontius Pilate wanted to save humanity by crucifying the
meek one.
"TOO GOOD TO THEM"
One afternoon there was a great commotion in the office. As soon as I
entered I felt that something extraordinary had happened.
"Did you hear the news?" one of the employees asked me. "Something awful
has happened."
"What is it?" I inquired curiously, as I knew that only something very
important could stir these hardened "charity workers."
"Why!" the young lady burst out, with horror in her voice. "Imagine! an
applicant, a mean, dirty applicant, a pauper, an immoral woman probably,
has slapped Mr. Cram's face."
"Did she? Really?" I exclaimed, and not being able to contain my joy I
laughed for the first time since I had crossed the door of the
institution. The lady wondered at my joy.
"What are you laughing for?" she asked. "Do you think it is fun to be
hit and insulted by an applicant? Mr. Cram is there the whole day
listening to their lies. He is one of the best men in the institution,
and along comes a dirty derelict, a pauper, and slaps him in the face.
Do you think it's fun? It shows how mean the poor are, how ungrateful,
impolite, criminal. You should not laugh about such things, Mr. Baer,"
she admonished reproachfully.
"But why did she do it?" I queried. "There must have been a reason. He
must have provoked her badly. Cram insults them all, and who knows what
terrible thing he said to this one!"
"No, no!" the young lady interrupted me, and her face took on an
expression of contempt and every time she pronounced the word applicant,
pauper, or any other characterisation of the poor who apply to charity,
she hissed it out between closed teeth, as though it were disgusting and
vile.
"No," she continued, "there is no reason strong enough to excuse her. To
slap the face of the one to whom you stretch a begging hand. Why, that's
the last rung of the ladder. It simply shows how unworthy they are of
charity. The first requirement of an applicant is to be humble. I know
whose fault it is," she insisted. "I know--" the last sentence conveyed
the intimation that I should question her, and I did so.
"It's Mr. Cram's own fault," she said. "He is _too good to them_--that's
the reason. I told him so," she finished, and sat down to her work.
Cram too good! Great God! If they call him _too good_, what about the
others? What about they themselves? Have I not yet seen it all--is more
horror to follow? All that I had witnessed in the basement presented
itself before me. Cram with the pipe between his teeth, reading an
application and putting his insolent questions, laughing in the
applicant's face, calling them liars, lazy, immoral women, dirty, and
all the rest of it.
"What happened next?" I asked the young lady. She had evidently felt
that I was not in sympathy with Cram's misfortune, for she answered very
brusquely:
"He had her arrested," and did not want to talk further. In vain I tried
to obtain details. Further than that she would not go.
I felt that Cram must have outdone himself to have provoked one of those
crushed souls to such an action. To tell the truth I had great
admiration for the woman who had done it. It gave me greater hope in the
redemption of humanity. I wanted to know all the details but could not
get them in the office. Cram himself was looked upon as a martyr. Once
when passing me he said: "You remember what I told you the other day?
They are a bad lot--and to think that I am a red hot Socialist. I hope
this will cure you of your soft heart," he added, as he walked away.
It took me three days before I learned the woman's address. I decided
to go and see her. One evening I walked up five flights of stairs of a
dingy tenement house. I knocked at the door and was soon allowed to
enter. As it was very cold the gas was frozen. The room where I sat, the
kitchen, was lighted by a candle stuck in an empty bottle. There was no
fire in the stove. I did not see the children, but heard their voices
from the adjoining room. "Mamma, bread. Mamma, who's there?" the little
ones queried. I told the woman frankly the object of my visit, without
telling her that I was employed by the charities. I only said that I had
learned through a friend what had happened and was interested to know
all about it from her own words. The children were continually
disturbing us with their questions and the rooms were so cold that I
could hardly stand it. I advised making a fire. Of course there was no
coal. I gave her some money to go down and buy some, also some bread and
butter and sugar. We were friends in a few minutes and she did not feel
very ill at ease. When I gave her the few cents I had not yet seen her
face, on account of the semi-darkness. Only her voice was so
well-modulated that a few words sufficed to indicate the personality of
the woman. Two big, sparkling eyes shone out from under her brows. She
told the children that she was going to buy bread and coal and they
clapped their little hands in joy, and as she closed the door one of
them asked: "Did the gentleman give you money? Is he from the
charities?"
"No," I answered, "I'm just a friend," and taking the candle I went into
the adjoining room where they were in bed covered with all the pillows
and clothes that the house afforded. There were two children. I gave
them some chocolate that I had bought for my own children, and soon we
became great friends.
"Have you any children?" the older child, about six years of age, asked
me suddenly.
"Yes--I have."
"How many?"
"Three," I told him.
"Have they always had what to eat?" the younger one, about five years
old, inquired.
"No," I said, in a voice choked with shame.
"No?" they both wondered, "and they have a papa. Mamma said all the
children who have papas have what to eat!" said the older one. "Yes,"
philosophised the younger, "but he gives away to other children. He's a
bad papa. Our papa was not a bad papa. He gave everything to his
children. That's the kind of papa we had."
The mother soon returned with her purchases, the coalman behind her.
Soon there was a fire in the stove. The tea kettle was set on the fire.
The children were given bread, and the house became very friendly. As my
eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness I remarked that the rooms
were kept very clean and orderly. Everything had its place. Some little
pictures on the walls were placed with taste. One would never have
suspected the actual want of bread on seeing the house. The quietness of
the children soon told me that they were sleeping. I waited until the
tea was ready. I casually learned that she was a country-woman of mine,
coming from Roumania and also from the same town. I even remembered some
of her relatives who were known as wealthy, as wealth goes in that
country. I lit another candle. The tea was ready. We sat opposite one
another to drink the beverage. The fact that we were from the same
country had given rise to a feeling of friendship between us. Instead of
talking about herself she inquired about my family and remembered my
mother, brothers and grandfather.
I had almost forgotten the object of my visit, so busily were we engaged
in questioning one another about relatives and acquaintances. All the
misery she had suffered had not stamped out her dignity. Good breeding
spoke from every line of her face, from every curve of her body. She
must have been about thirty years old. She spoke of her poverty as of a
misfortune that might happen to any one. She was not ashamed of it, as
of a vice, as most of the poor are--as they are made to feel once they
come under the influence of charity; and this made my mission a very
easy one. As I write these lines her beautiful modulated voice still
rings in my ears. Till late into the night we sat opposite each other.
Everything that I had witnessed in the last few months passed before my
mental vision. Every evil became accentuated, for I felt that the woman
before me must have been shamefully insulted. A refined, even educated,
woman of her temperament would not commit violence if she were decently
treated. Without her story I knew that she was right, but the poison of
mistrust had touched my heart also. I wanted to know, to question, to
bruise, to delve into her heart. And with all the ability I had acquired
as an investigator I brought her round to tell me her story; not merely
how she came to hit Cram, but from the very beginning, since she
married.
At first she refused, but I used such arguments that she at last
acquiesced. With one of her children, who could not sleep on account of
a headache, in her arms, in the half dark room, she told me her story of
woe, simply and with dignity, and if here and there was a note of pathos
or a tear she restrained it and went on bravely to the end. And this was
her story:
"Eight years ago, in Roumania, I married the man of my choice. He was a
dentist. Soon after our marriage a terrible persecution against the Jews
started. Jews were killed on the slightest pretext and their murderers
were never brought to justice. The parents of the murdered, fearing
vengeance, never tried to prosecute the criminals. It went so far that
killing a Jew became a kind of sport. We quit that cursed land and came
here. My husband, not knowing English, could not pass the State Board
examination and worked clandestinely until he was trapped by the County
Medical Association. He paid his fine and was let go free, but he was
afraid to work, and to hire out to others in this line is so poorly paid
that he could not even think of it. Soon the little money we had was
gone and to earn our bread he went to work in a tailor's factory as
presser. A child was born. Not accustomed to manual work, and angry at
what he considered his degradation, he fell sick. When he got better he
took to drink. Oh! those nights when he came home unable to stand on his
feet and crying. I would talk to him the next day--cry--and threaten to
leave him. He would promise to reform and the next pay day he would come
home drunk again.
"A second child was soon born. One day, at work, he spat blood. They
brought him home. He went to bed and when the youngest child was six
weeks old he died of consumption. This was five years ago. I was unable
to do anything to earn my living. Some friends helped me out for a while
but soon I was forgotten. On account of my small children I could not go
out to work. I also knew no trade. A few months afterwards I applied to
the charities for help. They wanted to take my children away to an
orphanage. This I could not bear. They are my children--I cannot
separate from them. Finally they agreed to pension me--two dollars and
my rent. From such a small sum we could not live. I learned to do some
work in the artificial flower business. I took work home, and in the
season, working until midnight, I would average about three dollars a
week. The investigator reported that I worked. One day she met me on the
street. I had just put on a new dress I had bought. The next week my
pension did not come. I went to the office and inquired.
"If you earn enough money to buy dresses you don't need charity," was
their answer. I explained to them that my other dress was torn, that my
new dress cost only two dollars, as I had made it myself, and offered to
prove to them that I did not earn more than three dollars a week. My
pension was resumed, but ever since the investigator has treated me very
badly. She has forced me to move every two or three months. Here it was
too dear, there too high, there too good, and so on. Last month she came
to me at ten o'clock one night. As I was already in bed I did not let
her in. She insisted and threatened that she would cut me off. This
enraged me still further and I did not open the door for her. She stood
in the hall more than half an hour, then she again knocked at the door,
cursed and went away. The next week was rent week. I received no money,
and the landlord, who knew that the charities pay my rent, came and told
me that unless he received his cheque in two days he would put me out.
"I went to the charities to ask why they did not send the money. I was
directed to a little room, on the door of which is written:
'Investigator.' Mr. Cram came in, and seating himself before me began
the most insolent questioning one could imagine. How much did I spend at
the grocery? How much at the butcher? How much for dresses? Then he
began to question me about my friends. I told him that no friends came
to my house. 'So,' he said, with an insolent twinkle in his eyes, 'and
who is the gentleman who was in your room the night you did not open the
door to Miss ----?' I felt my blood rush to my head. It was too much. I
struck him in the face and would have killed him if I had had my way.
They arrested me; the Judge freed me, and here I am."
As she finished, the words of the employé of the office who told me the
story rang again in my ears:
"It's Cram's own fault, he is too good to them."
Great God! I felt so little when I went away. Here was a real heroine.
"Could you give me any money for my little ones?" she asked. Not a trace
of the beggar in her attitude or voice. I humbly gave her what I could
and considered myself happy to have shaken hands with a real human
being.
ROBBERS OF THE PEACE
One of the greatest injustices to the poor is the right that the
charities arrogate to themselves to visit them whenever they choose.
Once you depend upon charity all privacy is gone. The sanctity of the
home is destroyed. It is as though the family were living in some one
else's--in the charities'--home. The investigator comes into the house
unannounced any time of the day or night, questions anybody she finds in
the house, criticises the meals, the curtains; goes around to the
grocery, to the neighbours, looking for a "clue" that will give to the
institution the right to cease helping the particular "case," to "cut
her" as they say. This continual living in fear of the investigator,
coupled with the attitude of the neighbours and merchants who have all
been told that Mrs. D. is a charge of the charities, pauperises the poor
to such an extent that most of them lose all sense of shame and pride.
Mere rags they are, that try to fit themselves to surroundings, and the
children, oh! the children of the poor! They are the greatest sufferers
of all. They are continually cross-examined by the investigators. Never
are they trusted, and the word "liar," is always on the lips of their
torturers. They must not play like other children, and if they make an
attempt to live their young lives, on the slightest childish quarrel
with their playmates the fact that they are depending on charity is
thrown in their face. "Charity kids," the other children call them. If
they claim at the grocers that the bread is stale the fact that the
mother depends on charity and consequently has no right to pride, is
brought up, and though they pay actual money they are not given actual
value for it. They must not play or stay in the hall. The janitor will
scold them more than any of the other children. The "Why don't you go to
work" is repeated every second. Their ages are always disputed. An
applicant's child is always over fourteen (working age) in the eyes of
the neighbours, janitor, groceryman, butcher, investigator and all the
rest of the torturers.
A woman's pension has been discontinued _because her children looked too
well_--they were "the picture of health," and as the investigator could
not understand it the pension was discontinued. Another woman's pension,
and many more before her and many more after her, was discontinued
because she dressed too neatly. (By the way, the woman was a dressmaker
by trade and as she had no sewing-machine she did it all by hand.) Like
the sword of Damocles is the charity demon, hanging over its victims.
"Who visits her?"
"Does she receive men at night?"
"Does she go out in the evening?"
"Does she buy butter?"
"Don't you think she looks in the mirror a little too much? Where does
she go?"
"Does she go to moving pictures?"
These are but a few of the questions that an investigator asks of the
neighbours and dealers, and beware if she, the applicant, has ever
quarrelled with them. But more than all this is the persecution of
coming into the house without being announced, so that the poor woman
might not be saved the pain of her friends (whom she does not want to
enlighten) meeting the investigator.
The sanctity of the home is guaranteed by the Constitution of the land.
It is a law. Are the laws different for rich and poor? In his own house
one may refuse to receive when and whom he likes. This inhuman system of
investigation is ruining the homes of the poor, driving away their boys,
their daughters, and making their escape from pauperism impossible.
I know of a boy to whom his mother had given vinegar to drink because
his cheeks were too red to please the investigator! I know of a woman
who when her husband died did not know that she was pregnant. Two months
later she knew it, but she had already told the investigator that she
was not. In fear that the investigator would not believe that she did
not know and would accuse her of immorality and cut off her pension, she
performed a criminal operation, infected herself and died. Such is the
dread of the "investigator," and almost all the applicants are women,
and all the investigators are women--mothers--sisters, sweethearts--but
their trade has hardened them so much that judging by their actions one
would think them wild beasts. And still the Managers think that they are
"too tender hearted." It is the whole system of organised charity that
is criminal--debasing both the giver and he that receives, and this is
not meant for the charities of this country alone. It is meant for the
charities of the whole world over.
"He who giveth to the poor," is no more. A sum of money is given to men
who make it their business to make the life of the one who needs so
miserable that he should prefer starvation and the grave to their help;
and these are the really worthy ones, while the successful applicant,
the one who can stand the whole vile process, is generally the most
miserable creature on earth, with no sentiment of pride or shame, and
often is not really in need. To their everlasting shame charities,
organised charity, has created a new type. The professional pauper.
These professional paupers have a regular system of obtaining money.
They know the names and locations of all charitable institutions, know
what to say to one and what to another--bribe the janitor and silence
the grocer and butcher. Borrow children from neighbours so as to make
the family appear bigger, and sell to others, novices, their knowledge,
or work on the basis of percentage. And for all this only Charity,
criminal, organised Charity, is to blame.
If men feel that through their fault, or the system which they continue,
their brothers and sisters suffer, that the children starve and perish,
then let them give _personally_, with their own hands, and if they want
to investigate the truth of what the poor have told them let them go and
do it _personally_. If they do not want to go then they shall not.
But giving to the organised charities is worse than stealing the last
crust of bread from the lost in the desert. Man's pride, his sense of
shame is his last property, the only one he has that might help him in
his struggle when he is down. Organised charity robs him of this last
thing, robs him and his wife and his children and children's children.
And this is the reason why those who have once applied to charities have
remained their "regular customers."
THE SIGN AT THE DOOR
Amongst the "discontinued pensioners" I visited, I found a young Jewish
woman with two children, one eight and one six years old. From the
reports I learned that she came to New York five years ago from Russia,
had worked some time in an embroidery factory and had been disabled in
an accident--lost her right arm.
The report also spoke of a fruitless search made to find her husband,
who, the woman claimed, had deserted her in Russia and was now in New
York. The investigator claimed that this was all a tissue of lies, that
Mrs. Baum's husband was a myth, as the children whom she had questioned
admitted never having had a "papa."
A certain Jewish paper in New York publishes daily the pictures of men
who desert their families, and other details about them. In the report
it was stated that the investigator asked Mrs. Baum for a picture of her
husband, but the woman refused it, saying that she did not want to brand
the father of her children. The report ended with the remark that the
whole thing was a tissue of lies and demanded closer examination. It is
interesting to know that the report was made by a new investigator,
working in a district formerly entrusted to a woman with whom this
investigator was at dagger points, because of some love affair. Later
on, the same investigator spoke about Mrs. Baum's severe illness and the
temporary removal of the children to an orphan asylum.
The pension was kept up for eighteen more months, then suddenly
discontinued. When I read this I tried to think out the reason for the
discontinuance. Was the woman placed in a hospital for incurables? Had
she fallen? Had she found her husband? The discontinuance dated eight
months prior to my reading of the report, and although I knew how many
times one can change his abode in New York, still I set out to hunt the
woman up. For more than a week I spent every moment I could spare trying
to trace her, but without success. In despair, I wrote ten letters, the
first three to the addresses I knew and on the rest of them I just
inscribed her name and the name of one of the lateral streets of the
lower East Side. In the letter I wrote a few words asking for an
appointment and giving my address and asking for hers. I hoped that the
woman had notified the Post Office of her changed address, and placed
not a little confidence in the searching qualities of the New York post
office employés. To my great astonishment I had a reply the next day,
and an address was given of a house I had passed twenty times in my
search.
However, to the Montgomery Street house I directed my steps that
evening. On the way I was overtaken by a heavy rain and looked more like
a wet rat than a man when I knocked at the door. I confess that I
thought more of getting dry than of the cause of my errand. Curious, but
personal discomfort makes one forget all remote considerations; the
whole man is taken possession of by the desire to get his bearings, to
right himself--much like the swinging pendulum when an accident has
crippled the machine that sets it in motion.
As soon as I entered Mrs. Baum's house and told who I was, I took off my
coat, with her permission, and hung it on the back of a chair which I
pushed near the kitchen stove, while I seated myself thereon and tried
to regain my wits.
The woman was alone. The children were at some kind neighbours. Oh! how
painful it was to see her at a little table near the window trying to
make bunches of artificial flowers! How she twisted and turned the wires
with one hand, with the left, while with the stump of the crippled right
she kept the bunch on the table. She had encased the stump of her broken
arm in a frame of wood so as to suffer less when working. She used her
teeth, her chin, forehead, knees and armpits to help form a bunch, and
the work went slowly, slowly. So little did she earn that she did not
care to stop when a guest came, though I felt right along that she was
consumed with curiosity. She lived in one room, which was kitchen,
dining-room, and bedroom for her and the children, and also workroom. It
did not take me very long to get dry, but it took less time for my coat
to catch fire. Before I had time to put out the fire the whole back was
gone. I had a hard time to keep the woman quiet on her chair. A cry of
fire would have created a holocaust in that fire-trap.
When all was quiet again, I sent a neighbour's boy to my home to bring
me another coat, while I seated myself near the table and began my
questioning. But I had no luck. A knock at the door was followed by the
entrance of a matron who immediately asked me who I was. I answered her
very politely that I had business of my own with the lady and was not
obliged to answer to strangers.
"Who is that man?" was now the question put to the crippled woman, who
was just twisting a rose with her stump.
"I don't know," she said, shrugging her shoulders.
"You don't know?" sarcastically. "You don't know who the man is who
sits near you in his shirtsleeves?"
"Madame," I tried to explain, "I came here during the rain, hung my coat
on the back of a chair. It caught fire, and here I am." But the matron
would not hear my explanation. She slammed the door and went out,
cursing, talking loudly and insultingly.
The woman was as pale as death. She looked from me to the door, and back
again. It was my turn to ask a question.
"Who is that woman?"
"The investigator of an institution that pays my rent."
So saying, the woman's head sank on the table and she wept bitterly. She
did not weep long. Real sorrow is deep and short. There is no time for
artistic posing when the knife has pierced the heart.
The broken-down figure rose, brushed away some tears, and asked me:
"And now, sir, tell me, who are you and what do you want?"
She stood before me defiantly, as though to say: "Make it quick, you
bird of evil."
"Madame," I began, "I am making a supplementary investigation on behalf
of the charities, and I want to look into the reason of your
discontinuance."
Hearing this she retreated, laid off her defiance, and sat down. I took
out my notebook and started my questioning.
"Have you now an idea where your husband is?"
"Of course I have, and this started the whole trouble," she began with
animation.
"How so?" I asked.
"For four years I looked and searched without any result. I hoped and
hoped, and the charities helped me also. I did not want to publish his
picture in the papers. Then I had that accident in the factory. Great
God! what that woman, Mrs. Sol (an investigator) made me suffer! Never
did she believe a word I said. Called me beggar, liar, crazy, and all
the ugly names in the language. I stood it all because I hoped that one
day I would get rid of them. Suddenly, one morning, while going to work,
I saw _him_ going into a door on Greene Street. I ran after him and
throwing my arms around him, cried: 'Chaim, Chaim.'"
Mrs. Baum sobbed again and repeated her husband's name, as though she
again saw him. After a few moments she resumed her narrative.
"He looked at me, with strange eyes, as though he saw me for the first
time. Meanwhile a crowd had collected. I still kept calling 'Chaim!
don't you know me? Your wife, Leah?' 'What wife Leah?' he asked. 'Are
you crazy?' Ah! my own husband; the father of my children, did not want
to recognise me. The crowd grew. I kept at him. A policeman arrived and
forced me to let him go. He quickly entered the door and I ran to the
charities and told them my story and gave them the street and house
number. I was told to come the next day, when some one would be sent
with me--a special man they had for such errands. What a day and what a
night I passed! The next morning, bright and early, I was at the office.
A young man accompanied me and I led the way to the house. We entered
and the man asked the bookkeeper if a Mr. Baum was not working there. He
looked in all the books and could find no such name. On my advice the
young man asked permission to visit the shop. We were allowed to go up.
We looked--he was not there. Yet I was certain that I had seen him
enter."
The investigator again treated me to such epithets as "crazy woman,
liar, etc." Coming down, I begged the bookkeeper to look over the names
of all the employés again. I thought perhaps he was working as a driver,
clerk--or at some other job. To get rid of me he asked, 'How does he
look?' I had his picture with me and I showed it to the man. He grew
pale, and exclaimed: 'That's our boss, Mr. Ap.' All at once he realised
what he had said and bent his head over his books. I was thunderstruck.
Here he was, the boss of all this and his wife and children starving and
begging. So that's the kind of a man he is? The investigator asked the
bookkeeper:
"'Is Mr. Ap. here?'
"'No.'
"'When do you expect him?'
"'He is gone to Europe.'
"'When did he go?' I jumped up.
"'I don't know,' he answered, and we could get no more information from
him. I cried and pleaded--it did not help.
"We returned to the office, where the Manager was told of all that had
happened. He listened very patiently and then said: 'Give me the
picture--we will attend to that now. Meanwhile, you keep quiet.' Some
additional money was given to me and they said that I must not go to the
factory. They would watch the place and if it was true that he had gone
to Europe we would have to wait his return."
The woman's chest heaved, and cold sweat appeared on her brow and face
and arms, as though her whole body were on the rack. She rested a few
minutes, drank some water and resumed.
"I waited. True, I could not keep away from the place. Several times I
walked past in the hope of getting a glimpse of him. I knew that if I
could meet him quietly and talk to him he might relent. I might show him
his children. Perhaps he had not recognised me. I had changed so much in
the years that had passed since we had last seen one another.
"He was not to be seen, however. Yes, he has grown rich--very rich--he
did not want me any longer. He has changed his name--perhaps he has
married another woman. All these thoughts came to me. My God!" The woman
sobbed again.
"For weeks and weeks my only occupation was to go from home to the
charities, from there to Greene Street and back. The Manager of the
office at the charities spoke to me several times and asked me details
about our former life and condition when we married. I told him all. The
truth as ever. One day as I walked down from the elevated on First
Street and Third Avenue I saw him again, but this time he was not alone.
A woman leaned on his arm. What I suffered! What I endured! I did not
approach him. I feared he might again go away. I ran to the office, and
told them that he was back. Again I was counselled to keep still. They
would attend to it. The next and the third day I asked the Manager
whether he had any results. 'No, he had not seen him.' Then on the
fourth day he called me into his private room and told me that Mr. Ap.
denied that he had ever married me.
"'Have you a marriage certificate?' he asked.
"I had none. We were married only religiously by a rabbi and had no
certificate.
"'But,' I said, 'I have his children.'
"'He does not recognise them. He says he knew you in Russia, true
enough, but that he never married you. When I told him your situation he
agreed to give you enough money to go back to Russia.'
"You understand?" the woman exclaimed. "Send me away from here."
"Of course, I refused and asked the Manager to help me force him to
recognise me and his children. I grew bitter, and wept and cried. He
quieted me down and told me to go home. That he would see that all would
be well.
"The next day and the next passed without result. The Manager was very
gentle, very nice. Then on the following day, no, on the next after
that, he told me that Mr. Ap. had agreed to give me one thousand dollars
if I would go back to Russia immediately. Of course, I did not want to
accept. He was my husband, the father of my children. He had to admit
that, though I had no certificate. I looked about to find a man from our
village, a man who knew him, a man who knew we were married. I found
none. Then I went back to the office and asked for the photograph. But
the Manager would not return it. Mr. Ap. had taken it. I cried, I
menaced, but could not get my picture back. Not only did they not help
me to legally force him to recognise me, to support me, but they took
away the only weapon I had--the picture.
"The Manager kept on urging me to take the one thousand dollars and go
to Russia. 'It's kind enough of him to do that. After all, I believe him
more than you, and he says that he never married you.'
"So he told me, to my face, a week after that I was 'discontinued.'
'What is that?' I asked. 'Take the one thousand dollars and go away.'
"I was put out in the street in the dead of winter. My children almost
froze. I ran to Greene Street. They would not let me in. I went to the
charities. The Manager just told me: 'People that can get one thousand
dollars need no charity.'
"Finally, a society paid my rent and I was again under a roof, but I was
afraid to say anything about my husband, and when they asked me I
answered that he was dead. How could I say otherwise? I had nothing to
prove my case. My one piece of evidence was taken away. He had changed
his name. I had no letters, no certificate. Now I will have more
trouble, through you, with that woman who saw you."
"And what do you intend to do now?" I asked.
"I have my plans. I expect some one from my village who knows him and
who knows that we were married. I am saving every cent I can for the
steamship agency to buy a ticket."
She bent down over her work again. Meanwhile my coat was brought. I took
leave, promised to look into the matter and went out.
In a few minutes I was in Greene Street. I looked up the number. Above
the door hung a big sign, announcing the business of the firm, and on
the door, near the knob, was nailed another little sign, with black
letters on white enamel:
"Member of organised charity."
All was now clear why the woman was not helped in her fight, and why she
was coerced through the "discontinuance." I remembered the Manager's
answer:
"Who is supporting this institution? The poor or the rich?"
And of course they had to work for the ones that were supporting them.
WHAT IS DONE IN HIS NAME?
Again, thinking how charitable institutions shield those who support
them, I must speak of a case which is similar to the one just described
in more than one detail. The only difference is in the fact that it
happened in another town, instead of in New York. I was present in the
office of the Institution when the woman was advised to accept a certain
amount of money and go to New York. The woman, after suffering hunger
and cold with her children for a long time finally accepted the most
shameful conditions ever imposed upon a woman, upon a mother. She was
compelled to give her children to the other woman. I was present when
the investigator, Mrs. G., herself a mother of children, explained to
the woman that it would be best to accept five hundred dollars and give
her children up.
"You will not bring them up as well as they will. They have money, and
if you really love your children, sacrifice yourself for them." That was
the substance of her argument, and when the woman cried and pointed out
that she had another child coming from this unnatural father, the
investigator insulted her most grossly, calling her a prostitute. In
the end she advised her to keep it secret, because if the other woman,
the new Mrs. Schneider, heard about it, heard that the man had not
ceased his relations with his wife, she might "get sore on the whole
thing," and though the woman had a good case of adultery and bigamy
against her husband the Institution--so active in other emergencies,
such as strikes, when they send out scabs--did not do the slightest
thing to help the woman to get justice. She was destitute, a foreigner
and was helpless alone. She haunted her husband's place of business, a
restaurant, from where she was ejected by the ever-obliging policeman on
the corner.
To quiet things the husband disappeared for a few weeks. The restaurant
was running on the second woman's name. This legal nicety closed the
doors to the poor mother.
Driven to desperation by the hunger of her children she sent them to the
other woman a few times to ask for food. This was given to them, but not
a morsel was sent to the mother. Meanwhile, the charities remained
absolutely inactive. They even refused to pay the fare of the mother and
children back to New York, on the ground that she could not say _how_
she would live there. Not a penny was given. "Accept the five hundred
dollars," was their advice.
After a time she was trapped with a man in a hotel, and arrest for
adultery hanging over her head like the sword of Damocles, the woman
agreed to sign papers releasing the husband from any responsibility, was
given a few dollars and a ticket to New York, and all ended here to the
glory of organised charity the world over.
Shall I say that the whole trapping affair was engineered by the husband
and the second woman? And yet I have suspicions of "another party" who
helped. I am very anxious to find out whether, on the list of yearly
contributors, the "gentleman" in the case has not increased his yearly
gift to help the poor and needy and recognise the good offices of the
institution in his own case. And if it is not on the list, some one has
been privately favoured.
THE PICTURE
In the course of time I became very suspicious of every record in the
Charity Institutions. Not one appeared to me truthful. I knew I could
not trust them any more than I would trust police records that are made
up not to give information but very often only to shield a particular
policeman. They are coloured so as to give the impression that it was
difficult to procure the information. Often the detective sent out to
get the particulars spends the time in a saloon or gambling house, then
on a few meagre details he makes up his report. When contradicted by the
"case" he simply says the man lies. The same thing happens with the
investigations of charitable institutions. Knowing this I suspected
every record of being far from the facts. In my investigations I made it
a rule not to take _anything_ for granted from the reports, but to look
into the matter myself.
One rainy day I looked through the records and laid aside the ones I
intended to work upon the next day. I decided to reinvestigate cases
where the pension had been discontinued. By this time it was very
difficult for me to work. The investigators feared me and had drilled
their "customers" to so answer my questions as to conform to the report
they had made on the case. Wherever I went, under whatever guise, I was
anticipated. The people were on the qui-vive and I often had to give up
my investigation without marked results.
At first I did not know to what to attribute my non-success and the
Manager grew impatient and spurred me on. "Results, results. If you
don't bring us extra information you are of no great use to us." Such
was the tenor of his speech. They needed "extra information." Right or
wrong, by hook or crook, but extra information to give an excuse for my
pay envelope. But it did not take long before I learned the cause of my
ill success. The people were warned.
I knew of several investigators who did it and I could have reported
them and had them discharged, but I disliked to do so. So I reported to
the Manager that some one had warned them and that I was working on a
clue to find out who had done it, when I would report. Naturally this
made them stop their interference. This subterfuge gave me time to do
other work--investigate the "discontinued" cases. It was work for myself
and I had no need for hurry, nor did I need to make a report of my
findings.
I copied a few addresses and some other particulars and the next day I
set out on my tour.
One of the cases that particularly interested me was the case of a young
Irish lady, a widow with four children, who had been pensioned for four
years. The report of the investigator was a continuous description of
misery and misfortune. One of the children, at least, was always sick.
At times there were three in bed and the mother too was in an "awful
condition." This was so from 1908 to 1910, until the month of December
of that year, the reports never being farther apart than two weeks.
Then, all of a sudden, the report was discontinued for two months, until
the end of February, and was then very much colder than usual. It simply
mentioned that Mrs. G. was much better and the children well. The next
one, made in April, contained an interesting item. The older child, nine
years old, was selling papers. "The woman denied that she knew anything
about it but I saw him myself," read the report. For May of the same
year there were three reports, the last one speaking of a "pail of beer
and cigarettes, in company with other men and women." It advises the
application of the "test." Then, after that, one big word.
"Discontinued."
It took me some time before I found Mrs. G. She had moved three times in
eight months and when I at last found her she was living in 63rd
Street, in a house near the river. Her dwelling was more like the hole
of a water rat than the quarters of a human being in a civilised city of
the New World. A mattress on the floor, a folding bed with torn sides,
on an egg box a gas stove, a rocking chair that had seen better days,
some rags hanging on the walls, this was the furniture of the house. And
the woman herself. She fitted excellently into the picture. It was as
though a painter had grouped them together as the subject of a
masterpiece of misery, to hold the world up to shame. Tall and angular,
her hair dishevelled, her face unclean, with dress torn, through which
greyish dirty linen peeped out, with bare feet in a pair of shoes picked
up from a garbage can, she stood in the middle of the room and looked
wonderingly at me, not knowing to what she owed my visit. She had hardly
enough strength to answer my questions. There were no children in the
house. I told her who I was. Her face lit up and she asked me about the
investigator--a man--who was in charge of the district. Pointblank I put
the question:
"How are you making a living?"
"I am not doing anything," she answered.
"Yes, but from where do you get money to buy food?"
"I am not buying any."
"But you don't live without food!"
She shrugged her shoulders and turned away in despair.
I waited a few moments, and as I got no answer I repeated my question.
All in vain. She would not answer. As I sat there the door was opened
and a little shrunken, dirty boy of about eight years, barefoot and
wrapped up in a pair of overalls, came in.
"I got a good big one," he said, as he put a package on the folding bed.
He turned round, and saw me. Mother and child looked at one another
understandingly. Without another word the boy disappeared. The mother
manipulated the package from the folding bed to the window sill.
"From where did the boy get this package?" I asked.
"From nowhere--he did not get it--he took it, from--"
"Why! my good lady, do you allow him to steal? Do you know where it will
land him?"
"In the hospital," she answered, as she gave me the package. I tore off
the paper,--a piece of cooked chicken, the remainder of a steak, three
old rolls, all of them with the stamp of the garbage can, with spit and
sawdust on them, and on one morsel the butt of a cigarette.
"You see," she said, "they can't arrest him for _that_," pointing to
the package. "He gets it from 'Martin's' restaurant."
I tried to get at the reason of her being "discontinued," and after a
time I had to ask her outright. From her talk I understood that she
wanted me to believe that Mr. S., the investigator, was very attentive
to her, and she had responded to his advances. That he would sit with
her at night and that he even took her to a moving picture show once. I
looked at her and did not believe a word she said. Mr. S. was a young
man and this woman could hardly inspire an old drunkard with such
sentiments. She understood the reason of my apparent doubt.
"I see you don't believe it." From under a broken mirror she brought
forth a picture of a lovely young woman of the pronounced Irish type,
with loose hair and clear-cut features.
"That's me," she explained, "three years ago--when Mr. S. knew me," and
as she talked she put her blouse in order and tried to look like the
picture. It was hard to find a resemblance, but it was undoubtedly her
image. With the picture she tried to tempt me. "A few weeks of decent
care and I am again the picture," she explained, thinking that this was
the only way to re-enter into the possession of the pension.
"Why were you discontinued?"
"It's all my fault. I had bragged about it to a neighbour and the
neighbour told it to another one who was in Mrs. S.'s care, and she
reported it to him. But I got my lesson. I'd keep mum. The boys are
out."
From the woman I learned how he used to get extra money for her every
time, on the plea that a child was ill, that she was ill, a whole
traffic in pity, and then I understood the record and understood the
sudden change of face and the discontinuance.
I tried to explain to the woman that here was a wrong way. With no
success, however. She told me that the former investigator, the one
before Mr. S., was also very friendly, and about him she never told. She
seemed to think that I was sent by Mr. S. for the same purpose, and
again and again she attracted my attention to the loveliness of the
picture, and appealed in its name. There must have been a trace of a
great disgust on my face, for she cleaned her hands and combed herself
as she spoke. From the emergency money I gave her a few dollars and told
her that I would visit her again and try to get her restored on the
pension list. She took the money, but I felt that she was disappointed.
Was the woman in her insulted? For she still assured me of her secrecy.
Before I went away I learned that two children had not been in the house
for the last four or five days.
"And where do you think they are?" I asked.
"One, I know, went on a freight, and the other must be somewhere." At
the door she again stopped me.
"Here's my picture, if you want it!" she said pleadingly, as she tended
it to me. I felt it would have been a great insult to have refused her
gift, to destroy the hope she had that the picture might awaken desires
and that these desires might bring her rent and food. There was a
glimmer of hope when I promised to do all in my power to restore her
pension.
Instead of going to my next address I loitered in the neighbourhood of
63rd Street, near the river. I knew that Mr. S. was in his district and
I hoped to find him. I was rehearsing mentally the words in which I
should clothe my opinion of his behaviour, when all at once I saw him
coming from a house. I approached him, called him into a saloon, and
without a word I showed him the picture.
"What about that?" I asked.
"She was all right once--that's how she looked, the cat," he explained
jokingly. "Did you get at her? You--you! She was all right once, how is
she now?" He took the picture and looked at it with interest, probably
remembering his debauches. I immediately saw that I could learn more
about the matter by handling the case dexterously, and I learned, oh! I
did learn how the money of the poor is spent--how payment is taken for
the bread and coal and rent, and how, when he has "another one," a fresh
case, the "cat" is simply discontinued.
Mr. S. was a man of about forty and had been fifteen years in the
business. He knew all the ropes and finished up with a promise to take
me to a young French widow who was a "peach," a new case, as he
explained, twinkling his eye knowingly. He still looked at the picture
of the Irish woman.
"You would never think her to be an applicant. She has such a
distinguished appearance. Oh! she's a peach--if she only could keep
mum," he said, referring to the French widow.
I offered him another glass, and when this was consumed I playfully
suggested: "Let's go up to Mrs. G.--just for fun."
At first S. refused, but as his eyes again caught the face in the
picture he ordered another glass, and then standing up he said: "Come."
He did not know her address so I had to lead the way.
We knocked and Mrs. G. opened the door and invited us in. But S. had
only one look at her, when he ran down the stairs. I followed him. He
was dumbfounded and kept on repeating: "Is that her? Is that her?"
I put the picture before his eyes: "How do you like the change?" I
asked. "It's good charitable work. When you get another one the 'cat' is
simply discontinued." I repeated his words.
A few months afterwards I saw the same woman in the street. She was
decently dressed and looked much better. Remorse or fear of my
denunciation had made S. provide for immediate needs. Soon she was
restored on the list and again the oldest son was ill and the third one
was in bed and all the tricks were resumed to have the institution pay
for the lust of the coward.
THE PRICE OF LIFE
The indignities to which the poor are subjected in the offices of
charity and by the employés of these organisations are of such a nature
that it is my honest belief that criminals get more consideration in the
police station, before the judge or in prison. After all, what are the
poor guilty of? Is poverty a crime? Is it not the inevitable result of
the present organisation of society? Is it possible that in the present
industrial system there should be no poor and no helpless human beings?
I am sure that the people who contribute tens of thousands of dollars to
these institutions do it in order to help those whom they have in the
course of their lives and business despoiled of their right to life and
its necessities. A few scenes which I witnessed at the charities will
suffice to give an idea of what the applicants have to undergo at the
hands of the officers of the institutions, whether they get relief or
not.
The sweetest word they ever use in connection with the poor is
"derelict." A quotation made by a sister institution (A Free Loan
Association), will give the essence of what they think and in what
spirit they act towards the poor.
Says the President of this institution in his Twentieth Annual Report:
"The object of this Society is to loan money to those in need, instead
of giving alms, and thus assist respectable people, whose character and
self-respect will not permit them to receive alms, etc., etc."
So, none of the people who apply for charity are respectable people or
have any self-respect! This is the spirit of all the charity workers
toward an applicant. Once a man or a woman has applied for help he is no
longer respectable, he has lost his self-respect. He is a "derelict." It
speaks ill for humanity that there has not yet been one poor person who
has taken revenge for all the injustices and insults heaped upon his
brethren! It shows how degraded they are through hunger. Not that they
are inherently coarse. Oh, no! but weakness, physical weakness to which
all those who apply to charity are reduced before they ever come to the
office. Once in the mill they are ground. I will leave the investigators
for a while and show how the "derelicts" are treated in the office.
I must not forget to mention that they are frequently called to the
office at nine A. M. and left in the waiting-room until five P. M., when
they are again told to come to-morrow, as the committee before which
they were called to appear has departed. Meanwhile, they had to sit
there and hear the insults to which the others are subjected, and stay
without food. Mr. Cram once told me that this sitting in the
waiting-room was a very good "test" of real want, for it has happened
that many of them never came back when they were again called.
"Once they pass through the waiting-room they are easy to manage," he
assured me. "They get their education."
The waiting-room is the school. I wonder how many of those who could not
stand the "test" turned the gas jet on. How many of them jumped into the
river! How many went to the street. Too bad we cannot know all the
crimes of charity.
A woman, Bertha S., about thirty years old, still good looking, despite
the misery she has passed through, is called before the Manager. She has
two small children whom she has left with a neighbour. She has been
called for nine A. M. As it is her first experience with the charities
she is at the doors at eight-thirty A. M. When the doors swing open at
nine-ten she is almost frozen. She had been waiting a full half hour.
She shows her letter of admission and is allowed in the building. The
whole day, until four-thirty P. M., she stands in the waiting-room,
sometimes walking around and crying, at other times sitting nervously
twisting her hands in despair and calling the names of her two
children.
At four-thirty, she and all the other women were told that on account of
the cold weather the committee would not meet that day and they should
come the next day. The office boy who brought the news to them meanwhile
permitted himself a joke, saying "The show is off for to-night. If you
like it, tell your friends."
The next day the building was so overcrowded with applicants that more
than fifty had to stand the whole day. Bertha S. looked to be the most
unfortunate of all. Her nervousness was painful. At three-thirty P. M.,
the manager began to call the applicants into his room. Every time the
door swung open she hoped or feared that now was her turn, and when she
saw each time that another was called she became more and more nervous.
Finally, at five, she was called in. From a side door I entered the
room. With the Manager sat a few other men. They looked her up and down,
measuring her from her toes to her head, as though she had committed
some crime. Then one of the men, a well fed, red-faced, thick-bellied
brute, looked in a record purporting to be the investigator's report and
the third degree, the most inhuman one I have ever witnessed, started:
"How old are you?" he yelled at the woman without looking at her.
"Thirty."
"How many children have you?"
"Two."
"How old are they?"
"One six years and, one--"
"You lie--liars you all are--how old are your children?"
"One is six years old and one--"
"You liar, you shameless liar, six years old? Ha!" and so saying this
man jumped up from his chair. "Six years old, eh, and she goes around to
moving picture shows and stays out the whole night. Six years old?" He
approached the woman. "And what do you think, do you think we don't know
what _you_ do? We know all right."
"But, mister," the woman tried to speak.
"Keep quiet. Don't talk." This was another man's advice, whereupon the
first one continued.
"Here," showing her the record, "we have it in black and white--daughter
goes to one moving picture show and the mother to another one."
"But, mister," the woman tried again, but the man grew angry, his fat
body shook, his well-fed face flushed and he delivered himself of all
the venom there was in him.
"And you dare to apply for charity. A woman of your kind, an immoral
woman. And tell me and all these gentlemen here that your daughter is
six years old. You are a liar, a street woman, that's what you are."
At this point the woman cried out and fell headlong on the floor. One of
the other men looked in the record and remarked that Mr. W. who had
cross-examined the woman had made a mistake, as the record was not that
of Mrs. Bertha S., but another applicant's. I watched the whole scene
and thought: "Great God! How he will have to apologise now!" But no--not
a word of apology. She was only a poor woman, a "derelict." I wonder
what the "gentlemen" in question, or any other member of that committee
would have done to any one who would have dared to insult his wife or
sister or daughter in the same manner.
Mr. W. bent down, looked again in the record book, and after convincing
himself, said: "Yes, I made a mistake." Meanwhile, the woman kept on
sobbing bitterly.
The secretary munched at his cigar rather nervously.
"Give her five dollars," Mr. W. said to the Manager, and the poor woman
was led out, the price of her degradation in her hand. I followed her to
an elevated station. She sobbed bitterly the whole way. She never
appeared at the office again, but a few months later the following
notice appeared in the papers:
MOTHER AND CHILD CRAZED BY HUNGER
Entire Family Has Been Without Food or Roof for Three Months.
As Patrolman B---- was walking along H---- Street, Brooklyn, early
yesterday morning, he observed a woman and two children, a girl of
twelve and a girl of six, standing in a door way half clothed, each
nestling close to the other to keep warm. Apparently they failed in
this, for the mother and children were blue from cold and were
shivering.
The officer spoke to the woman. But she did not answer. He spoke to
her again and she raised her eyes to him. The eyes were those of an
insane person, and the officer took the mother and children to the
S---- Street police station. There the police fed the family and
the woman gained sufficient strength to speak.
She told the police that she was Mrs. S----. She was deserted by
her husband and for the last three months, since she was
dispossessed, she and her children lived in cellars and doorways.
After telling that much of her story the woman collapsed. She
became hysterical, insane again.
The police began to question the elder girl, the twelve year old
May. May spoke only a few words and her mind began to wander. Like
her mother she became hysterical.
The woman and her two children were then taken to the ---- Court
before Magistrate D----. The magistrate at once saw that he was
dealing with an unbalanced woman and he ordered her sent to the
observation ward of the Kings County Hospital.
In the Children's Court, Justice G---- found that the children were
suffering from starvation and exposure. They were sent away with
the mother.
It looked doubtful yesterday whether Mrs. S---- would ever
completely recover from the insanity into which she was thrown by
months of starvation and homelessness.
AIR--FROM FIFTH FLOOR TO BASEMENT
The head investigator, a woman who was once a socialist, and considers
herself now a social worker, was announced to lecture. Her subject was
"Advice to consumptives living in a large city." The subject was
interesting and the lecturer an acquaintance of mine, so I decided to go
and hear her. When the doors opened the hall was crowded with people. It
was in her own district and she had decided to make a big show. All the
poor depending on her were ordered to the lecture. Willy nilly, they had
to go.
An interesting lot they were as they sat huddled up in old rags, their
street clothes left at home, those they had on the poorest they could
find. All pale, haggard, hungry, they really needed the advice.
Mrs. B. was a good talker and had her subject well in hand. Her son is a
physician and from him she got all the fine points, figures and
explanations. She started out very convincingly and proved that poverty
and ignorance go hand in hand and are the father and mother of
tuberculosis. She went on to explain the absolute necessity of rich and
wholesome food (What irony--they that get two or three dollars a week
shall have rich and wholesome food!), diversion, quiet, and above all
"Air, fresh air all the time--Live on the top floor, do not mind the few
stairs more! Sleep on the roof in the summer, and keep your windows
open! For God's sake keep your windows open!... Let the sunshine clean
your room--Light and air are the greatest enemies of microbes and
tuberculosis and the greatest friend of man, especially the one touched
with the white plague. Breathe, breathe every time you get a chance.
Purify your lungs and keep under God's blue roof the greater part of
your time."
Thus she finished. There was the usual applause and the usual questions
by some outsiders, and that was all. At the finish we walked together,
Mrs. B. and I, for a half hour and we spoke about the poor and their
condition, about the iniquity of the present system, and her former work
for Socialism, and she told me how she had pawned her watch and chain to
pay the printers that were setting up the first Socialist weekly.
Naturally I was astonished to hear that. I knew that she was one of the
most cruel questioners at the office. If something was to be found out
she was appealed to. She had a heart of stone, of granite, and her
sensuous mouth could assume a smile that set the poor applicant
trembling.
"And where is he now, your husband? Do you think that I am such a fool
as to believe a single word of what you say?" And when the woman would
cry she would say "Rot, rot, rubbish. I am too old in the business."
Such was her attitude. How could she be so sincere when she spoke to
others? How could she pawn her watch for a struggling Socialist paper?
Was she once better, had her work killed her heart? Thus was I thinking
when I left her, and was already trying to excuse her because I found
that I too had, in my work for the Charity Institution, lost a good deal
of my faith in mankind.
Some weeks afterwards, I was investigating the case of a tailor who was
taken to the hospital suffering from the white plague. He had a wife and
four children ranging from three to fourteen years. The woman had
applied to charity and the office had a suspicion that the man belonged
to an organisation that paid a sick benefit and was consequently not
entitled to charity. I found out, through the secretary, that the man
had once been a member but having fallen in arrears with his dues he was
disqualified and was not receiving any benefits. The family was living
on a first floor rear apartment in Monroe Street, two rooms, where the
sunshine never comes, with windows opening in the yard, an ill-smelling
dirty yard, and the people had no idea of hygiene. They never kept
separate the dishes and pillows used by the sick one. They ate from them
and slept on them.
The children, pale and sick, three of them short-sighted, the mother and
little child with inflamed eyes, were in a horrible condition.
I immediately advised the office and succeeded in getting the family
moved to the Bronx, near a park, and on the fifth floor. So little were
the children accustomed to light that the first few days they felt
dizzy. Their clothes and bedding was disinfected. Hurriedly the family
was put on the pension list, rent, coal and three dollars per week. It
was not much, it was not enough, but it was the best I could obtain for
the unfortunate people.
A few weeks later the oldest girl too was taken to the hospital and the
mother was treated in one of the clinics in the neighbourhood. She
obtained two quarts of milk a day free.
They had not been long in the country--four or five years; had
previously lived in a little village in Northern Russia. The man was a
dealer in grains there, was always in the open air. The sudden change to
a big city, a sweatshop, was too much for him, too much for all of them.
Several months later, while I was in the neighbourhood, I went to visit
the family. At the door of the fifth floor, I was told they had moved
away long ago. Where? The people did not know, nor did the janitor, nor
did the neighbours. When I returned to the office I looked up the
records and found their new address, 171st Street. I took a note of it,
and as my work brought me there a few days later, I called in. I was
astonished to find the people living in a basement--the rooms were next
to the engine room. It was a big apartment house and the heat in the
rooms was suffocating.
"Woman," I cried, "what have you done? Why did you move from the other
place?"
"The investigator told me to," was her answer.
"But you are killing yourself, ruining the broken health of your
children."
She shrugged her shoulders, the children coughed, and even the baby had
eyeglasses on. It was the district of Mrs. B.--the investigator who
lectured so well on tuberculosis. I waited for her in the office and
asked her why she had moved the family from the top floor to the
basement.
"I can't run up so many stairs every day," she answered angrily. "I have
a big district and they all live on top floors. Basements are cheaper
and it is easier for me," she went on.
"But, Mrs. B., the whole family is touched by the plague. You know
better than they do how necessary it is for them to live in light and
airy rooms. You lecture on the subject."
To all this the investigator answered, "It's easy to lecture but to
climb so many floors a day is too hard. Let them live in the basement.
They will not die. It's not so terrible. Let them sit in the park ...
let them go up on the roof."
No amount of talk could persuade her that it was dangerous for the
people to live, eat, sleep in the basement, and when I had succeeded in
convincing the manager that a change should be made, and I called on the
woman, she was already so drilled by the investigator that she claimed
her legs hurt her and her heart was weak and I had to give it up. She
would not move from the basement.
A second child was taken to the hospital in a few months, but as a
recompense for the mother's good behaviour the investigator did not, as
usual, reduce the pension of the family.
The father died, the two older girls died, the mother with the other
children returned to Russia to live ... to die.
THE INVESTIGATORS
Up to now I have said so much about the heartlessness of the
investigators that naturally the question arises: "If they were
good-hearted women, and if the men in charge of the charities were
better men, would that solve the problem of charity?"
No. It's not their fault. The system of organised charity is such that
they must inevitably become as they are after a few months' work. Almost
all of the women investigators and other employés of the institutions
are recruited from the impoverished middle class. To obtain a position
what is commonly called "pull" is absolutely necessary. As a rule these
people have never known any want--real privation. At first, when they
see poverty in all its ugliness they get excited, run to the office and
make a terrible report, advising relief in heartrending sentences. They
imagine that their will will immediately be carried out and that their
mission is a very high one. But when the Manager calls them into his
office and proves to them that they have been lied to and deceived; that
the pauper is a habitual liar; that you cannot believe a single word
they say; when he tells them that if they do not prove more adroit the
next time their position is not suited to them, then they look at the
poor with other eyes. He or she is no more a subject for pity, a wreck
that has to be pulled ashore. It is bread and butter for herself. If she
allows herself to be deceived by an applicant she endangers her own
position.
All the investigators fear poverty, fear it because they know how
terrible it is, _that it is a crime_. Not a word of the poor is
believed. Her next report will be a tissue of lies and accusations,
viz.:
"The family has rich connections from whom they get help. From the
grocer, butcher and baker I have learned that the family spends more
than is necessary." If the applicant is a widow and young she inserts
that neighbours doubt her morality; that she stays out late at night,
etc., etc., and she closes her report with the observation that the
applicant is unworthy and undeserving of charity. This she does because
she has learned that she is not to advise to give, but that she is paid
to find out reasons and excuses why help should not be given.
It is true that in the course of the work the investigators find cases
where the organisations are deceived, but this makes them so suspicious
that if one were to take their word for it help would never be extended
to an applicant.
Then, another reason for her stony-heartedness is the continual sight
of poverty. After a time she gets so accustomed to it that nothing
shocks her. It is like a surgeon in a hospital who becomes so hardened
that the amputation of an arm or leg is nothing--a trifle.
The poor represent so much material. One sews aprons and shirtwaists for
a living; she, the investigator, visits the poor. The hangman too makes
a living! It's all business. There can be no love in such work. The men
and women in charge of it have not chosen it because they want to devote
their lives to succouring the suffering widow or orphan. They are not
sisters of mercy. They are paid to do the work. They make a living so.
If the investigators were superior beings things would be somewhat
different; but superior beings go into business nowadays. It pays
better. Some investigators only get thirty to forty dollars per month.
I have known investigators who left their own children at home without
food. They trembled lest a mistake cost them their positions. They did
all in their power to find out a reason why the applicant should not
receive money to buy bread for her children. One might fancy that were
they investigating their own cases they would still find reasons.
Think of an investigator moving a consumptive family from the fifth
floor to the basement, she who lectured on tuberculosis: "Light and air
are the best cure for consumption." This is how she spoke, this is what
she believed, but in practice! When a woman has to climb stairs from
morning to night, then her only thought is how to make her own work
easier; how to make a living easier.
Yes, but it costs the lives of women and children. And does the owner of
mines think of that? And does the manufacturer think of that? And does
the milkman, a devout church-goer, who baptises his milk, think of the
children he is killing, of the future generations he is crippling? And
does the canner think of that when he allows rotten meat to go into his
cans? No. They are all making a living and do not believe that animals
should be killed for food.
I knew a young lady who got a job as investigator--a nice young,
sentimental girl. After a few months' work she was the terror of the
poor and the pet of the Manager. She had reduced by half the list in her
district. From a hundred applications she investigated not ten got
relief. She would visit them day and night to find a reason why they
should be cut off. The neighbours for ten blocks around would know that
Mrs. So and So had applied to the institution. And when one day I told
her she was not fit for such a position because she had no heart, and
advised her to get a job at something else, she showed me her right
hand. She had lost her fingers in an accident at an embroidery machine
and she had to make a living!
Another young woman, who was engaged to marry a friend of mine and who
got the position through me, lost the affection of her fiancé.
"She has entirely changed in the last few months," he told me. "She is
suspicious, hard, cold and cynical. Her face has changed, she never
laughs, never smiles."
Poor chap! He did not know the cause. I did.
The work, the surroundings, the system of organised charity, unfits them
for anything, and among all the crimes of charity the one that stands
out pre-eminently is that it ruins the lives of all the men and women
who work in it. Only a God and an angel could remain good. But the gods
are in the heavens and the angels are crucified.
THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR
No district of any big city in the world has such a desolate miserable
look as the "charity blocks" in New York. They are grouped a little
everywhere. For this, New York is like the body of Job, with sores and
wounds all over.
Around all the gas houses near the river, north, south, east and west,
take any of the gay streets of the metropolis. Forty-second Street,
Thirty-fourth Street, Twenty-third and Fourteenth Streets. With what
dirt and misery they start on the west, how they get brighter and gayer
towards the middle, on Seventh Avenue, how they reach the climax at
Fifth Avenue, and how the Third Avenue elevated in the east and Ninth
Avenue elevated in the west cuts off the ugly part of the city, like the
butcher who trims around the meat. The cheap tallow for the poor and the
centre piece for the rich, and all comes from one and the same animal.
Just as the meat, in proportion to its nutrition, costs the poor dearer
than the rich, so do the apartments of the poor cost more than the Fifth
Avenue houses, taking into consideration the comfort of the latter. As
a matter of fact it is well known that Cherry, Henry, Monroe and Hester
Street properties are more profitable, proportionately to the money
invested, than Fifth Avenue apartments. No vacant house is to be seen
around the celebrated "lung blocks." The terrible stench coming from
across the river, where the garbage of the city is dumped, has killed
the sense of smell of the poor wretches living there. They wonder at you
when you keep handkerchief to your nose while passing. It is an ordeal
to pass along Avenue A between Twenty-fifth and Thirty-fourth Streets.
The poisonous gas combines with the stench of the slaughter house, and
the piled up garbage in the river. Still the streets are full of
children, playing, and God only knows why the poor have so many
children.
My work brought me into daily contact with the children. "The nutty
scribbler," they called me, the Italian boys pronouncing my title with
their peculiar accent; the Russian with theirs and the Jewish boys
translating it altogether into their idiom. Poor, underfed and oversmart
children; ready-witted and half-witted. Child and old man. Buying sour
pickles instead of bread when they get a penny, ready to do anything for
a puff from a cigarette. Their ideal is not to become a workingman. They
know too well where that leads. Kid Herman, Kid Twist and Red Larry are
their heroes, and in childish contradiction, the policeman is their
idol. How they swarm around a newspaper when there is "anything" in it.
An interesting murder case, a robbery, a street shooting, these are the
sensations of their lives. When the father comes home drunk they envy
him and will soon imitate him. They help the burglars hide, and chase
the pickpocket over the roofs, together with the detectives, giving
advice in turn to the hunted how to escape and to the policeman how to
catch him; rejoicing when the bad one has escaped and booing him along
the street when he is handcuffed. And every year their domain extends a
little further until it approaches the rich. A block from Riverside
drive and two from Fifth Avenue--extending continually, like a cankerous
wound.
One evening I visited a family that was pensioned by the charities. The
father had just been discharged from the consumptive hospital as cured
and I was instructed to see whether he was well enough to work. A plan
was on foot to open a soda water stand for him, to keep him outdoors,
lest he again become sick.
They had five children. The oldest, a girl, was twelve years old. It was
ten o'clock and I expressed wonder that the children were not in the
house. The mother's answer was not straight.
"They are playing, they are visiting neighbours, I sent them away,"
were her answers to my questions. I sensed a mystery and decided to wait
until they came home. I talked with the man and asked him his prospects
for the future, to which he hopefully answered that he was sure to get
his old place in the clothing factory as presser. I questioned him about
his life in the hospital and sought every way to prolong my visit. The
mother was very anxious to get rid of me, but I stuck to the job. About
half past ten the children came in, all pale and worn-out, hardly saying
good-night, but going straight to bed.
"From where do you all come so late?" I asked.
"From the street," the mother answered and pushed them into the other
room. I felt that it was useless to insist, so I retired. The street was
deserted. No child's play was going on and the children of the applicant
did not appear to be the sort who would stay until the last. I walked up
and down the block without meeting a child. At the corner, near the gas
house, on Fourteenth Street, I met a policeman and talked the matter
over with him.
"The street has turned good these last few weeks. Don't know what's the
matter," was his remark.
I did not agree with him and walked up and down the street until past
midnight, when I decided to continue my investigation the next morning.
A postcard advised the office that I would be busy the following morning
and could not report. At eight o'clock I was near the house of the
consumptive family. The children all went to school. Not to compromise
my work I stayed away until noon. The children came for lunch and
returned to school. It was early in the spring and a glorious day. I
could not help thinking of the beauty of the field and forest on such
days, when the green is shooting out from the soil in the gardens, when
the plough is carving out slices from mother earth and the birds are
singing in the trees. I could not help thinking how life has taken these
poor people out of their homes in the little villages of Russia, Poland,
Italy and Roumania and has crowded them, nay, herded them together in
what is called a tenement row, to sleep there and to work in a sweatshop
in the day. How do they feel when they think of their homes, when they
see a green leaf, when they hear the song of a bird? When one has colour
in his face they say that he still has the "home colour." When they
mention a feat of strength or endurance they add: "It was my first year
here you know."
At three P. M. I was back at my post. I watched the children come from
school. With their many-coloured dresses they looked from far away like
a swarm of butterflies, but as they approached they became less gay,
less expansive.
Talk about the influence of home on children! Among a group of children
I spied the oldest girl of the consumptive man. She walked more slowly
than the others, as though she wanted to retard something that waited
for her at home. Finally she took leave of the others and entered the
hall. By and bye the other sisters and two brothers came. I waited
outside. A quarter of an hour later the oldest girl and the second
brother, about nine years old, came out, still chewing the piece of
bread they had for tea. They walked hand in hand, and I followed them.
They turned the corner and entered a tenement house near Fourteenth
Street. I intended to follow them upstairs when I observed many other
children of about the same age coming. Some were as young as six and
seven, however. Some were biting apples, others, boys of nine to twelve
years, throwing away the last bit of the butt of a cigarette, with the
regretful gesture of the workingman before the factory door closes on
him and the bell rings.
"Where in heaven are you all going?" I asked a group of boys.
"None of your rotten business," was the reply in chorus. I withdrew and
watched. One after another they went up the stairs until I had counted
nearly a hundred. When I saw no more coming I went up the stairs, the
dark, ill-smelling stairs, until I reached the third floor. It was a
rear yard house. Dark, dirty, dingy. On the third floor I stopped and
listened. A buzzing noise came from one of the apartments, as though a
thousand hands were crushing silk paper between the fingers. Soon a door
opened. A little girl came out. I did not speak to her. Interested, I
entered the apartment without knocking at the door. In a room 10 x 15,
were two long tables and on both sides sat the little boys and girls on
benches. On the tables were piled up all sorts of candies and
chocolates, which the children put in paper boxes that lay near them. So
engrossed were they in their work that they hardly lifted an eye to see
who had entered. A big burly Italian met me and asked what I wanted.
"Is Mr. Salvator Razaza living here?" I asked.
"No Razaza. What you want come here. Get out and shut up." And not very
gently he pushed me out.
So this was where they all went. So this was what they were doing.
Filling boxes with candy when they had no bread to eat. Here was the
place where they buried their youth--the children of the poor!
Outside I saw an old man grinding a hand organ, but there were no
children to dance around him on the sidewalk. The street was deserted.
"Rotten business," remarked the old fellow. "No children. Me not know
what the matt. All the bambinos morte, sick? Sacre Madonna," the old man
shook his head, packed up his organ and thoughtfully went away, carrying
his music to other places, where the children are not packing candies in
boxes while their stomachs are empty. No, no, old man. The children are
not dead. _They_ never die. "The children of the poor never die," as
Mrs. Barker puts it. They pack candies, but the mystery was only half
solved. The rest was easy to get at, late at night, when the children of
the consumptive man came home. They had to unburden themselves. All five
were working there--piece work, and they were making as much as forty
cents a day, the five of them combined. More than a hundred were working
in that factory, while many other hundreds of children worked in other
factories which had of late started in the neighbourhood. Willow plumes,
artificial flowers and packing candies were the chief trades, while the
making of cigarettes and labelling of patent medicine bottles and boxes
occupied a minor position. On close investigation I found that more than
fifty per cent. of the people pensioned by charity had their children
at work in these murderous shops.
Through a ruse I obtained entrance to several of them. It is so
terrible, so unbelievable that I keep from describing it, knowing
beforehand that you will say "exaggerated." One hundred children in one
room, windows and doors tightly closed. So that the attention of people
may not be attracted the children must not talk, must not sing. One
little gas burner in the middle of the room is all the light there is.
The toilet is almost always out of order. The piece work has so
sharpened their ambition that their little fingers fly and they do not
want to spare the time for personal necessities. The little girls and
boys strong enough to keep back all these hours soon get bladder
diseases--while the weaker ones--well, their clothes tell the tale. But
the ladies want willow plumes and artificial flowers and Miss So and So
has to be given a nice looking box of candy by her beau. The rich men
have to get richer and give more money to the charity institutions, and
hospitals must be endowed with millions and the sanatoriums for the poor
consumptives and the cheap milk mission and the free doctor--all this
must be kept up and costs money--and money must be made.
When I reported what I had found out I was told by the Manager not to
report it to the Factory Inspectors, because it was so much better that
the children should train themselves from early youth to shift for
themselves and become self-supporting, and that ultimately they would
have to go to work--what was the difference? I was told that I was not
telling them anything new, only I should find out who the children were
working for and how much they were earning, so that the pension could be
reduced accordingly.
"But they are little tots," I argued.
"Well, they are all older than you think," I was answered, "and idleness
is so very dangerous."
"But the places are unsanitary," I further insisted.
"They can't build special factories for them, it's too costly in the
first place, and secondly it would make too much noise and they would
not be permitted to work."
"They will all get sick--consumptive," I said.
"Well, well, it is not so terrible. They have a remarkable power of
resistance, and if they do get sick--we will take care of them. That's
what we are here for. Mr. Baer, you are an anarchist."
Thus ended my interview on behalf of the children of the poor. I did
something on my own hook.
The result?
The factories were moved away to another place. They could easily do it.
They did not build any special houses for the trade. Later on I learned
that one of the biggest concerns in willow plumes did half of their work
through outside contractors and that the price was so low that no woman
could make a living at it. The head of this concern is one of the
biggest philanthropists and contributors to charities. Still he might
not know! Just as the young lady does not know from where her Christmas
pleasure money comes--and distraction is absolutely needed.
MOTHER AND SON
There was a boy about fourteen years of age who would daily menace his
widowed mother with denouncing her to the "office." He terrorised the
poor woman to such an extent that she allowed him to do whatever he
wanted. He never went to school, he smoked, he drank, he boxed, he went
to all the moving picture shows, and all this money he obtained from his
mother on the threat to tell the "office." The great sin the woman had
committed was that she had remarried, a young man, and the groom had
decamped with two hundred and fifty dollars that she had saved up in the
seven or eight years widowhood and beggary. The whole affair was a
secret to the institution, as the woman feared her two dollars weekly
pension would be discontinued should they learn of the marriage.
I happened to visit the home one morning. The boy was pacing the room,
almost naked, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his lower lip, his
face enraged, his eyes red, and as he paced the room he cursed the
mother, who was standing at the stove preparing the food. And the
language he used! I heard all the curses of the Bowery as I stood near
the door.
"I'll fix you up, you old rag--cough up or I'll smash your ivory."
When I knocked at the door he greeted me with "What d'hell d'you want?"
He had his mouth set for another greeting of the same sort when I gently
but firmly pushed his insolent face back and entered.
The woman knew me and the boy probably guessed my occupation, for he
proceeded to coerce his mother, motioning and making faces, as though to
say: "Yes, or I will tell!" The mother ignored his threats so he
casually remarked: "Mrs. Carson!"
The woman made a sign that she would yield and the boy dressed in a
hurry.
I busied myself with my notebook all the time, just throwing out a
question once in a while. When the boy was all dressed up he beckoned to
the mother to follow him into the other room. She did so. I heard a
suppressed curse and a deep sigh. The boy came out first. As he passed
my chair I stood up and seizing his wrists I asked: "Why don't you go to
school?"
No answer.
"Why don't you go to work?"
No answer.
"How dare you insult your mother the way you do, you scoundrel?"
Instead of answering me he turned to his mother.
"You squeaked--ha? That's what you did! You old piece of rot."
Thus spoke a son to his mother. I felt the blood rushing to my head and
I struck the blaspheming mouth. He tried to fight back and even took the
pose, but I was too much for him. I pinned his arms.
The mother had not moved. If anything she was rather satisfied that the
boy got his due. Again the boy twisted around, and looking daggers at
his mother he said:
"You'll tell tales? Ha? and let this big stiff hit me? And you'll stay
there like a lamp post? Ha! that's what you'll do? I'll croak you, I'll
put you right--wait!"
"Do you know," he turned to me, "that--"
"George, George," the mother yelled and covered the boy's mouth with her
open palm.
"I know it all," I interrupted. "I know that your mother's name is Mrs.
Carson."
The poor mother looked as though she had been struck with an iron bar
over the head.
"And now, my boy, give back the money you forced from your mother a
while ago." From his pocket the mother took out a dollar and some
cents. I compelled the boy to go to school, menacing him with everything
I thought would scare him, and obtained from him the promise that he
would go the next morning. But when I turned to go, I saw the mother
shivering as though in the clutches of fever. She motioned me not to go,
then sat down and wept. Of course I knew the reason for her tears. She
was afraid her pension would be cut off. She had lied to the
institution. She had not told them of her unfortunate remarriage. She
was afraid of her son. Why? Because, fearing that the investigator might
question her son she had been compelled to lie to the boy and teach him
to lie, and he grew up with the knowledge that he could obtain anything
he wanted from his mother with the threat of telling the truth. The
child grew up a blackmailer. The system of organised charity made him
one.
And how many, how many similar occurrences have led to similar results?
How many men in stripes could trace their downfall to the "question
room" of the Investigator!
As to this particular boy--he went to school for a few weeks but his
street habits corrupted the other children, and he was expelled. For a
time he sold newspapers on the streets, then he gradually sank lower and
lower and was later on sent to a reformatory to expiate a minor offence
and from there he will be discharged a graduated criminal.
Webster says: "A university is an assemblage of colleges established in
any place, with professors for instructing students in the sciences and
other branches of learning, and where degrees are conferred. A
university is properly a universal school, in which are taught all
branches of learning, or the four faculties of theology, medicine, law,
and the science and arts."
I know universities where the students are not instructed in the
sciences and other branches of learning, and where degrees of a
different kind are conferred on the students; a university where other
objects than theology, medicine, law and the sciences and arts are
taught.
Burglary, blackmailing, safe-blowing, murder and other applied sciences
and arts are taught there.
The professors are incomparably superior to the ones in the colleges;
they are men with great experience and they impart their knowledge to
their pupils without charging fees. They do it for love.
In the underworld the Reformatory is called "the university." And one
who knew, one day remarked to me: "If they (meaning the good citizens)
had wanted to create a school where crime should be taught they could
not have done better than by fixing up a Reformatory. They get a real
training there, pass through a sound apprenticeship and are masters of
their particular branch when they come out."
CLIPPING WINGS OF LITTLE BIRDS
"And where does she go every day?"
"In town."
"Does she stay out late at night?"
"I don't know."
"Do men come often to the house?"
"Sometimes."
"Is she sometimes drunk? I mean, does she use whisky? Is there whisky in
the house?"
"Not that I know of."
"Does she smoke cigarettes?"
"No."
"Is she visiting the moving picture houses?"
"No--never."
To whom are these questions put? To the children of the poor. The "she"
referred to is the mother, and the child is often not older than eight
years, and sometimes younger. And who puts the questions? The
investigators, of course.
On the information of a neighbour that Mrs. S. "eats meat every day and
goes to the moving pictures," a widow's pension was cut off and she was
submitted to the test.
A few days later, when the mattress and broken chairs were on the
street the woman was in the office crying, tearing her hair and beating
her heart. She begged the Manager, she begged the
investigator--"Pity--pity--have pity on me and my children." But they
turned a deaf ear. When the poor woman got beyond control the janitor
was called to help and he made it short. He put her out.
For more than an hour she sat outside on the steps. Then suddenly she
got up and disappeared. A half hour after she was back again, but not
alone. She had brought her three children--a little boy of five and two
girls, one seven and the other nine years old. She wanted to go in, but
the janitor, acting on the orders given, did not let her pass the door.
When she once had put her foot between sill and door he simply beat her
off. Her screams and cries could have melted a heart of stone, but not
that of a janitor of a charity institution. They are picked men, of a
special brand.
I spoke to the investigator and tried to convince her that the test had
gone far enough, but she was not satisfied.
"That woman," she said, "is acting--acting her part. I am not going to
be taken in. No, she would not fool me."
Then suddenly she ran out and through the open door I saw how she
literally tore away the three children from their mother's hands and
when the mother wanted to follow her little ones the door was slammed
and caught the fingers of the unfortunate woman. She screamed, the
children screeched and all the other applicants ran to the door,
wailing, crying--but the investigator ordered them all away. Only the
janitor finally took pity and brought a wet towel to wrap around the
injured hand. However, she was not let in. The investigator dragged the
three little ones away to her room.
I don't know why I was under the impression of seeing a wolf carrying
away three little chicks to his den.
She brought them to her room and when she saw me coming she slammed the
door and remained alone with them. From outside I heard the children
crying and the questioning intonation of their torturer. She changed her
tactics every minute. First she was sweet and promising, then loud and
menacing, then again persuading, convincing, suddenly threatening,
intimidating--a real Scarpia in petticoats.
Meanwhile the mother stood outside, a wet towel on her arm, crying and
beating with her head the heavy closed door. It was the hour when the
"committee" was going home. An automobile stopped at the door and the
Manager majestically descended the broad stone steps, seated himself
comfortably on the cushioned seat, buttoned his coat and beckoned to the
driver. A few seconds later he was enveloped in a cloud of dust.
After all, why not speak simply? From where all that money? Even if it
is only from the salary, does it not prove that he is getting too much?
Isn't that money destined to pay for other things than gasoline, and a
liveried chauffeur? Has any one of those that bequeathed a certain
amount of money to an institution written in his will that a proportion
of the money shall go for gasoline, liveried chauffeurs and high
salaries? Of course, a certain amount of money is necessary for
expenses, but is there no reason to feel that there is "somethin
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