Chapter IV: Part 4

I was like a prison world full of choked-in voices, all beating in my brain to be heard. The minute I’d listen to one voice a million other voices would rush in crying for a hearing, till I’d get too excited and mixed up to know what or where.

Sometimes I’d see my brain as a sort of Hester Street junk-shop, where a million different things--rich up-town silks and velvets and the cheapest kind of rags--were thrown around in bunches. It seemed to me if I struggled from morning till night all my years I could never put order in my junk-shop brain.

Ach! If I only had an education, I used to think. It seemed to me that educated people were those who had their hearts and their heads so settled down in order that they could go on with quiet stillness to do anything they set out to do. They could take up one thought, one feeling at a time without getting the rest of themselves mixed up and excited over it. They had each thought, each feeling, laid out in separate shelves in their heads. So they could draw out one shelf of ideas while the rest of their ideas remained quiet and still in the orderly place inside of them.

With me my thoughts were not up in my head. They were in my hands and feet, in the thinnest nerves of my hair, in the flesh and blood of my whole body. Everything hurt in me when I tried to think; it was like struggling up towards something over me that I could never reach--like tearing myself out inch by inch from the roots of the earth--like suffering all pain of dying and being born.

And when I’d really work out a thought in words, I’d want to say it over and over a million times, for fear maybe I wasn’t saying it strong enough. And I’d clutch at my few little words as a starving man clutches at crumbs. I could never sit back with the feeling that I had said what I wanted to say, like the educated people, who are sure of themselves when they say something. The real thing I meant remained inside of me for want of deeper, more burning words than I had yet found in the cold English language.

With all the confused unsureness of myself, I was absolutely sure I had great things in me. I felt that all I needed was the chance to reach the educated higher-ups, and all the big things in me would leap out quicker than lightning. But how was I to reach these American-born higher-ups when they were so much above me? I could never get into their colleges because I could never take the time to learn all the beginnings from school to pass their entrance examinations. And even if I had the time to study, I wasn’t interested in grammar and arithmetic and dry history and still drier and deader literature about Chaucer and Marlowe. I was too much on fire trying to think out my own thoughts to get interested in the dust and ashes of dead and gone ones. And yet I was so crazy to reach those who had all that book-learning from school in their heads that I was always dreaming of the wonderful educated world that was over me.

Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night and stare through the darkness at an imaginary world of educated people that would invite me in to share with them their feast of learning. I saw them sitting around a table talking high thoughts, all the wisdom of the ages flowing from lip to lip like living light. I saw just how they talked and how they looked, because once I had worked as a waitress in a professor’s house. Their words were over my head, but the sound of their low voices went through me like music of all that I longed and dreamed and desired to be.

I used to hold myself tight-in, like a wooden dummy, when I passed them the food. My lips were tight together, my eyes half-closed, like a Chinaman’s, as though I didn’t see or hear anything but my one business of waiting on them. But all the time something in the choked stillness of me was crying out to them: “I’m no dummy of a servant. I want to be like you. I could be like all of you if I only had a chance.”

“If I only had a chance” kept going round and round in my head.

“Make your chance,” a still voice goaded me.

“If I could only write out my wonderful thoughts that fly away in the air I’d get myself a first place in America.”

“No, go ahead. Think connectedly for one minute. Catch your crazy wild birds and bring them down to earth.”

And so I pushed myself on to begin the adventure of writing out my thoughts.

But who’ll print what I write? was my next bother.

In my evenings off I used to go to the library and kept looking and looking through all the magazines to see where I could get a start. At last I picked out three magazines that stood out plainly for their special interest in working people. I will call them _The Reformer_, _The People_ and _Free Mankind_.

_Free Mankind_ was a thin, white, educated-looking magazine, without covers, without pictures, without any advertising. It gave me the feeling when I looked through the pages that it was a head without a body. Most of the articles were high words in the air. I couldn’t make out what they were talking about, but some of the editorials talked against paying rent. This at once got me on fire with interest, because all my life the people I knew were wearing out their years worrying for the rent. If this magazine was trying to put the landlords out of business, I was with it. So, fired by the inspiration of the moment, I rushed to see the editor of _Free Mankind_.

I don’t remember how I ever pushed myself past the telephone girl and secretary, but I found myself talking face to face with a clean, cold, high-thinking head, Mr. Alfred Nott, editor-boss of _Free Mankind_. My burning enthusiasm turned into ice through all my bones as I looked into the terrible, clean face and cold eyes of this clean cold higher-up. But I heard my words rushing right to him like the words of a soap-box speaker who is so on fire with his thoughts that even the cold ones from up-town are forced to listen to him.

“I can put a lot of new life into your magazine,” I said. “I have in me great new ideas about life, and I’m crazy to give them out to you. Your magazine is too much up in the head and not enough down on earth. It’s all words, words, long-winded empty words in emptiness. Your articles are something like those long sermons about nothing, that put people to sleep. I can wake up your readers like lightning. I can make your magazine mean living things to living people.”

The man fell back in his chair as if frightened. His mouth opened to speak, but no words came from his lips.

“What you tell us about not paying rent is good enough,” I went on. “But you should tell us how to put an end to all that. I know enough about not having a place to sleep in to write you something that will wake up the dead. You’re not excited enough with feelings when you write, because you live in a soft steam-heated place with plenty of money to pay for it. But the poor like me, with little rent, and drying out their heads worrying for that little, they feel what it is to be under the foot of those Cossacks, the landlords. In my stories I’d write for you, I’d get the readers so mad, they’d rush out and do something.”

Even while I was yet talking, Mr. Nott slipped out of the chair and disappeared like a frightened rabbit. I could see him vanishing through the door before I could stop my flow of words. I looked about me in the empty room. I felt as if I’d been slapped in the face.

I ran out of the office with tears in my eyes. And I couldn’t stop my crying in the street. So this is his Free Mankind! When a person comes to him with something real he runs away as from a madman. Here was a paper that would reform the world, and its boss wouldn’t even listen to one of the people he was setting out to save.

But there were other magazines in America, I told myself. _The Reformer_ flashed before my eyes, because I remember it said on the back page, “It speaks for the average man.”

I found myself again face to face with an editor--John Blair, the great liberal, the friend of an American President, the starter of a new school that was to gather all the minds of the new world. With this man I thought I’d begin by asking him a question instead of rushing myself out to him in all my hungry eagerness.

“Mr. Blair,” I demanded in a voice of choked-in quietness, “do you think that the educated people know it all?”

He looked at me for a long minute. His lips closed together, his eyes cool like a judge. I felt he looked me over to decide in what shelf I belonged in the filing bureau of his college head.

“No, my dear young woman. I don’t say that educated people have a monopoly of knowledge, but they are the only ones that know how to use it.”

“Then it’s only the thoughts of educated people for your magazine,” I cried disappointedly. “How about people like me with a lot to say but can’t put it in fancy language? Isn’t your new school to be different from the old colleges in that you want to bring out the new thoughts of new people like me? Wouldn’t you want to give a person like me a chance in your magazine?”

“But can you express yourself logically, reasonably?”

“Logic--reason! Reason--logic!” I jumped from the chair with excitement. “That’s why your magazine is so dull, so dead, because all your living thoughts die down in the ashes of dead logic. Reason and logic aren’t life. Hunger and desire are life. I know, because I’m burning up with it. With this hunger they paint pictures and write books and sing songs----”

“You Russians are full of interesting stuff. But you’re so incoherent. You’d be no use to us unless you could learn to think clearly.”

“I know my thoughts are all mixed up,” I pleaded with educated quietness, “but it’s only because I have so much to give and nobody wants it. Wouldn’t it be better for your magazine to have my mixed-up aliveness instead of the cold logic from your college writers?”

He smiled down pityingly on me.

“I’m afraid that such a chaotic mind as yours would be useless to an intellectual journal. Good day.”

Not crushed, but bitter and hard and with head high, I walked out of _The Reformer_ office. Were all the magazines that set themselves up to save the world headed by such narrow-thinking tsars? Only to prove that all of them were run by some clique of college professors, I went to the office of _The People_.

Here the editor didn’t run from me like a frightened rabbit or sting me with logic like John Blair. He cut short the interview by going over to the shelf and taking down a book which he handed to me with pitying kindness. “This will help you to think and maybe to write.”

Out in the street, I gave a look at the book. It was Genung’s “Psychology of Madness.” It grew black and red before my eyes. So it’s madness to want to give out my thoughts to the world? They turn me down like a crazy beggar only because I come to give them new ideas.

I threw the book away in the nearest ash can. But that word “madness” was to me like a red rag to a bull. I had to write now or go crazy with the wrath these reformers roused in me.

“What’s my place in America?” I asked myself. “Must I remain a choked-in servant in somebody’s kitchen or somebody’s factory, or will I find a way to give out my thoughts to America?”

So what I wrote was the story of myself--myself lost in America.

It was like new air in my lungs to let myself loose on paper. But how could I get it to the American people? One thing I was sure of. I wasn’t going to subject myself to another insult from those reform magazines. I don’t know how it happened, but I picked out _Wharton’s Magazine_, the most literary magazine of all those I looked over, simply because it looked so solidly high above the rest. My desperate need for a hearing made me bold. In my ragged coat and torn shoes I walked into that breath-taking rich office like a millionaire landlord with pockets full of rent money.

“Do you want something new and different for your magazine?” I asked with the low voice and the high head of an American-born.

Friendly eyes turned on me. “We’re always seeking something new and different. Have you got it?”

I looked right into the friendly eyes. This was Mr. Robert Reeves, the editor. He had the clean, well-dressed look of the born higher-up. But how different from those others! His face was human. And there was a shine in the eyes that warmed me.

“I’m an immigrant,” I said. “I have worked in kitchens, factories and sweatshops. I’m dying away with the loneliness of my thoughts, so I wrote myself out in a story.”

He snatched up the papers and began to read. A quick light flashed into his eyes. Then he turned to me.

“I can see you have something original. But I can’t decide just now. You’ll hear from me as soon as I have read it through.”

I could hardly walk the street for excitement. My life hung on this man’s answer. And it came two days later in a small envelope. He offered me two hundred dollars for my story.

I couldn’t believe it wasn’t a dream. And I rushed with the letter to his office. “You could have given me a hundred dollars, fifty, twenty-five, and it would have been to me a fortune. But two hundred--do you mean really to give that much to me?”

He chuckled to himself, and I rushed right on. “I thought New York was a den of thieves. The landlord robbing you with the rent, and the restaurants cheating the strength out of every bite of food you buy. And I thought the college higher-ups were only educated cowards with dish-water in their veins, scared to death of hungry people like me, scared to look at the face of suffering. Their logic and their reason--only how to use their book-learning brains to shut out their hearts--to make themselves deaf, dumb and blind to the cry of hunger and want knocking at their doors.”

“Just because you felt all that so deeply you were able to put fire in your words.”

A thousand windows of light burst open in me as I listened to him. I was like something choked for ages in the tight chains of ignorance and fear, breathing the first breath of free air. For the first time my eyes began to see, my ears began to hear, my heart began to understand the world’s wonder and the beauty.

A great pity welled up in my heart for the Alfred Notts and the John Blairs whom I had so mercilessly condemned. Poor little-educated ones! Why did I fear them and envy them and hate them so for nothing? They were only little children putting on a long wooden face, playing teacher to the world. And I was a little scared child afraid of teacher--afraid they were grown-ups with the power to hurt me and shut me out from the fun of life.

Why wasn’t I scared of Robert Reeves from the first minute? It was because he didn’t frighten people with his highness. He didn’t wear a wooden face of dignity. He was no reformer, no holy social worker--only a human being who loved people.

That one flash of understanding from Robert Reeves filled me with such enthusiasm for work that I shut myself off from the rest of the world and began turning out story after story.

Years passed. The only sign of success I became aware of was the increasing flood of mail that poured in on me. People who wanted to be writers asked me for literary help. People who imagined I was rolling in money sent me begging letters for aid. At the beginning I wanted to help them all. But I soon saw that I’d have to spend all my time answering the demands of foolish self-seekers who had nothing in common with me. And so I had to harden my heart against these time-wasting intruders.

One day, as I walked out of my house absorbed in one of the characters that I was writing about, someone stopped me. I looked up. A pale, thin, hungry-eyed young man asked timidly: “May I speak to you for a minute?” Then he told me that he had written a book, and that the publishers had turned it down, so he had printed it himself. “And I want your opinion,” he pleaded, “because none of the critics would listen to me.”

“I’m too busy,” I said irritably. “If you had to print the book yourself it means it’s no good.”

“I thought you, who once had such a hard struggle, would remember--would understand.”

“There’s nothing to understand except that you killed yourself with the public.” And I walked off.

I tried to resume the trend of my thoughts, but I could not think. The pale face, the hungry eyes, followed me accusingly in the street. “You who once struggled would understand” rang in my ears. And suddenly I realized how brutal I had been.

“But it’s the merciless truth,” I defended. Nobody could help him till he finds himself. Nobody helped me till I had found myself.

“No, I’m all wrong,” another voice cried. “Robert Reeves helped me. I could never have helped myself all alone. You can only help yourself half the way. The other half is some Hand of God in the shape of a human contact.”

Something hurt so deep in me I couldn’t work that day. I couldn’t sleep that night. The pale face and the hungry eyes kept staring at me through the darkness. I, who judged the Alfred Notts and the John Blairs--I saw myself condemned as one of them. I had let myself get so absorbed with the thoughts in my head that I ceased to have a heart for the people about me.

What would I not have given to see that young man and tell him how I suffered for my inhuman busy-business, which had shut my eyes to the hungry hands reaching up to me. But I never saw him again. And yet that man whom I had turned away like a beggar had brought me the life of a new awakening. He had made me aware that I could never contribute my deepest to America if I lost the friendly understanding of humanity that Robert Reeves had given me, if I lost the one precious thing that makes life real--the love for people, even if they are lost, wandering, crazy people.

AMERICA AND I

As one of the dumb, voiceless ones I speak. One of the millions of immigrants beating, beating out their hearts at your gates for a breath of understanding.

Ach! America! From the other end of the earth from where I came, America was a land of living hope, woven of dreams, aflame with longing and desire.

Choked for ages in the airless oppression of Russia, the Promised Land rose up--wings for my stifled spirit--sunlight burning through my darkness--freedom singing to me in my prison--deathless songs tuning prison bars into strings of a beautiful violin.

I arrived in America. My young, strong body, my heart and soul pregnant with the unlived lives of generations clamouring for expression.

What my mother and father and their mother and father never had a chance to give out in Russia, I would give out in America. The hidden sap of centuries would find release; colours that never saw light--songs that died unvoiced--romance that never had a chance to blossom in the black life of the Old World.

In the golden land of flowing opportunity I was to find my work that was denied me in the sterile village of my forefathers. Here I was to be free from the dead drudgery for bread that held me down in Russia. For the first time in America I’d cease to be a slave of the belly. I’d be a creator, a giver, a human being! My work would be the living joy of fullest self-expression.

But from my high visions, my golden hopes, I had to put my feet down on earth. I had to have food and shelter. I had to have the money to pay for it.

I was in America, among the Americans, but not of them. No speech, no common language, no way to win a smile of understanding from them, only my young, strong body and my untried faith. Only my eager, empty hands, and my full heart shining from my eyes!

God from the world! Here I was with so much richness in me, but my mind was not wanted without the language. And my body, unskilled, untrained, was not even wanted in the factory. Only one of two chances was left open to me: the kitchen, or minding babies.

My first job was as a servant in an Americanized family. Once, long ago, they came from the same village from where I came. But they were so well dressed, so well fed, so successful in America, that they were ashamed to remember their mother tongue.

“What were to be my wages?” I ventured timidly, as I looked up to the well-fed, well-dressed “American” man and woman.

They looked at me with a sudden coldness. What have I said to draw away from me their warmth? Was it so low from me to talk of wages? I shrank back into myself like a low-down bargainer. Maybe they’re so high up in well-being they can’t any more understand my low thoughts for money.

From his rich height the man preached down to me that I must not be so grabbing for wages. Only just landed from the ship and already thinking about money when I should be thankful to associate with “Americans.”

The woman, out of her smooth, smiling fatness, assured me that this was my chance for a summer vacation in the country with her two lovely children. My great chance to learn to be a civilized being, to become an American by living with them.

So, made to feel that I was in the hands of American friends, invited to share with them their home, their plenty, their happiness, I pushed out from my head the worry for wages. Here was my first chance to begin my life in the sunshine after my long darkness. My laugh was all over my face as I said to them: “I’ll trust myself to you. What I’m worth you’ll give me.” And I entered their house like a child by the hand.

The best of me I gave them. Their house cares were my house cares. I got up early. I worked till late. All that my soul hungered to give I put into the passion with which I scrubbed floors, scoured pots, and washed clothes. I was so grateful to mingle with the American people, to hear the music of the American language, that I never knew tiredness.

There was such a freshness in my brains and such a willingness in my heart that I could go on and on--not only with the work of the house, but work with my head--learning new words from the children, the grocer, the butcher, the iceman. I was not even afraid to ask for words from the policeman on the street. And every new word made me see new American things with American eyes. I felt like a Columbus, finding new worlds through every new word.

But words alone were only for the inside of me. The outside of me still branded me for a steerage immigrant. I had to have clothes to forget myself that I’m a stranger yet. And so I had to have money to buy these clothes.

The month was up. I was so happy! Now I’d have money. _My own, earned_ money. Money to buy a new shirt on my back, shoes on my feet. Maybe yet an American dress and hat!

Ach! How high rose my dreams! How plainly I saw all that I would do with my visionary wages shining like a light over my head!

In my imagination I already walked in my new American clothes. How beautiful I looked as I saw myself like a picture before my eyes! I saw how I would throw away my immigrant rags tied up in my immigrant shawl. With money to buy--free money in my hands--I’d show them that I could look like an American in a day.

Like a prisoner in his last night in prison, counting the seconds that will free him from his chains, I trembled breathlessly for the minute I’d get the wages in my hand.

Before dawn I rose.

I shined up the house like a jewel-box.

I prepared breakfast and waited with my heart in my mouth for my lady and gentleman to rise. At last I heard them stirring. My eyes were jumping out of my head to them when I saw them coming in and seating themselves by the table.

Like a hungry cat rubbing up to its boss for meat, so I edged and simpered around them as I passed them the food. Without my will, like a beggar, my hand reached out to them.

The breakfast was over. And no word yet from my wages.

“Gottuniu!” I thought to myself. “Maybe they’re so busy with their own things they forgot it’s the day for my wages. Could they who have everything know what I was to do with my first American dollars? How could they, soaking in plenty, how could they feel the longing and the fierce hunger in me, pressing up through each visionary dollar? How could they know the gnawing ache of my avid fingers for the feel of my own, earned dollars? _My_ dollars that I could spend like a free person. _My_ dollars that would make me feel with everybody alike!”

Breakfast was long past.

Lunch came. Lunch past.

Oi-i weh! Not a word yet about my money.

It was near dinner. And not a word yet about my wages.

I began to set the table. But my head--it swam away from me. I broke a glass. The silver dropped from my nervous fingers. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I dropped everything and rushed over to my American lady and gentleman.

“Oi weh! The money--my money--my wages!” I cried breathlessly.

Four cold eyes turned on me.

“Wages? Money?” The four eyes turned into hard stone as they looked me up and down. “Haven’t you a comfortable bed to sleep, and three good meals a day? You’re only a month here. Just came to America. And you already think about money. Wait till you’re worth any money. What use are you without knowing English? You should be glad we keep you here. It’s like a vacation for you. Other girls pay money yet to be in the country.”

It went black for my eyes. I was so choked no words came to my lips. Even the tears went dry in my throat.

I left. Not a dollar for all my work!

For a long, long time my heart ached and ached like a sore wound. If murderers would have robbed me and killed me it wouldn’t have hurt me so much. I couldn’t think through my pain. The minute I’d see before me how they looked at me, the words they said to me--then everything began to bleed in me. And I was helpless.

For a long, long time the thought of ever working in an “American” family made me tremble with fear, like the fear of wild wolves. No--never again would I trust myself to an “American” family, no matter how fine their language and how sweet their smile.

It was blotted out in me, all trust in friendship from “Americans.” But the life in me still burned to live. The hope in me still craved to hope. In darkness, in dirt, in hunger and want, but only to live on!

There had been no end to my day--working for the “American” family.

Now rejecting false friendships from higher-ups in America, I turned back to the ghetto. I worked on a hard bench with my own kind on either side of me. I knew before I began what my wages were to be. I knew what my hours were to be. And I knew the feeling of the end of the day.

From the outside my second job seemed worse than the first. It was in a sweat-shop of a Delancey Street basement, kept up by an old, wrinkled woman that looked like a black witch of greed. My work was sewing on buttons. While the morning was still dark I walked into a dark basement. And darkness met me when I turned out of the basement.

Day after day, week after week, all the contact I got with America was handling dead buttons. The money I earned was hardly enough to pay for bread and rent. I didn’t have a room to myself. I didn’t even have a bed. I slept on a mattress on the floor in a rat-hole of a room occupied by a dozen other immigrants. I was always hungry--oh, so hungry! The scant meals I could afford only sharpened my appetite for real food. But I felt myself better off than working in the “American” family, where I had three good meals a day and a bed to myself. With all the hunger and darkness of the sweat-shop, I had at least the evening to myself. And all night was mine. When all were asleep, I used to creep up on the roof of the tenement and talk out my heart in silence to the stars in the sky.

“Who am I? What am I? What do I want with my life? Where is America? Is there an America? What is this wilderness in which I’m lost?”

I’d hurl my questions and then think and think. And I could not tear it out of me, the feeling that America must be somewhere, somehow--only I couldn’t find it--_my America_, where I would work for love and not for a living. I was like a thing following blindly after something far off in the dark!

“Oi weh!” I’d stretch out my hand up in the air. “My head is so lost in America! What’s the use of all my working if I’m not in it? Dead buttons is not me.”

Then the busy season started in the shop. The mounds of buttons grew and grew. The long day stretched out longer. I had to begin with the buttons earlier and stay with them till later in the night. The old witch turned into a huge greedy maw for wanting more and more buttons.

For a glass of tea, for a slice of herring over black bread, she would buy us up to stay another and another hour, till there seemed no end to her demands.

One day, the light of self-assertion broke into my cellar darkness.

“I don’t want the tea. I don’t want your herring,” I said with terrible boldness. “I only want to go home. I only want the evening to myself!”

“You fresh mouth, you!” cried the old witch. “You learned already too much in America. I want no clock-watchers in my shop. Out you go!”

I was driven out to cold and hunger. I could no longer pay for my mattress on the floor. I no longer could buy the bite in the mouth. I walked the streets. I knew what it is to be alone in a strange city among strangers.

But I laughed through my tears. So I learned too much already in America because I wanted the whole evening to myself? Well, America has yet to teach me still more: how to get not only the whole evening to myself, but a whole day a week like the American workers.

That sweat-shop was a bitter memory but a good school. It fitted me for a regular factory. I could walk in boldly and say I could work at something, even if it was only sewing on buttons.

Gradually, I became a trained worker. I worked in a light, airy factory, only eight hours a day. My boss was no longer a sweater and a blood-squeezer. The first freshness of the morning was mine. And the whole evening was mine. All day Sunday was mine.

Now I had better food to eat. I slept on a better bed. Now, I even looked dressed up like the American-born. But inside of me I knew that I was not yet an American. I choked with longing when I met an American-born, and I couldn’t say nothing.

Something cried dumb in me. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know what it was I wanted. I only knew I wanted. I wanted. Like the hunger in the heart that never gets food.

An English class for foreigners started in our factory. The teacher had such a good, friendly face, her eyes looked so understanding, as though she could see right into my heart. So I went to her one day for an advice:

“I don’t know what is with me the matter,” I began. “I have no rest in me. I never yet done what I want.”

“What is it you want to do, child?” she asked me.

“I want to do something with my head, my feelings. All day long, only with my hands I work.”

“First you must learn English.” She patted me as though I was not yet grown up. “Put your mind on that, and then we’ll see.”

So for a time I learned the language. I could almost begin to think with English words in my head. But in my heart still hurt the emptiness. I burned to give, to give something, to do something, to be something. The dead work with my hands was killing me. My work left only hard stones on my heart.

Again I went to our factory teacher and cried out to her: “I know already to read and write the English language, but I can’t put it into words what I want. What is it in me so different that can’t come out?”

She smiled at me down from her calmness as if I were a little bit out of my head. “What _do you want_ to do?”

“I feel. I see. I hear. And I want to think it out. But I’m like dumb in me. I only feel I’m different--different from everybody.”

She looked at me close and said nothing for a minute. “You ought to join one of the social clubs of the Women’s Association,” she advised.

“What’s the Women’s Association?” I implored greedily.

“A group of American women who are trying to help the working-girl find herself. They have a special department for immigrant girls like you.”

I joined the Women’s Association. On my first evening there they announced a lecture: “The Happy Worker and His Work,” by the Welfare director of the United Mills Corporation.

“Is there such a thing as a happy worker at his work?” I wondered. “Happiness is only by working at what you love. And what poor girl can ever find it to work at what she loves?” My old dreams about my America rushed through my mind. Once I thought that in America everybody works for love. Nobody has to worry for a living. Maybe this welfare man came to show me the _real_ America that till now I sought in vain.

With a lot of polite words the head lady of the Women’s Association introduced a higher-up that looked like the king of kings of business. Never before in my life did I ever see a man with such a sureness in his step, such power in his face, such friendly positiveness in his eye as when he smiled upon us.

“Efficiency is the new religion of business,” he began. “In big business houses, even in up-to-date factories, they no longer take the first comer and give him any job that happens to stand empty. Efficiency begins at the employment office. Experts are hired for the one purpose, to find out how best to fit the worker to his work. It’s economy for the boss to make the worker happy.” And then he talked a lot more on efficiency in educated language that was over my head.

I didn’t know exactly what it meant--efficiency--but if it was to make the worker happy at his work, then that’s what I had been looking for since I came to America. I only felt from watching him that he was happy by his job. And as I looked on this clean, well-dressed, successful one, who wasn’t ashamed to say he rose from an office-boy, it made me feel that I, too, could lift myself up for a person.

He finished his lecture, telling us about the Vocational Guidance Centre that the Women’s Association started.

The very next evening I was at the Vocational Guidance Centre. There I found a young, college-looking woman. Smartness and health shining from her eyes! She, too, looked as if she knew her way in America. I could tell at the first glance: here is a person that is happy by what she does.

“I feel you’ll understand me,” I said right away.

She leaned over with pleasure in her face: “I hope I can.”

“I want to work by what’s in me. Only, I don’t know what’s in me. I only feel I’m different.”

She gave me a quick, puzzled look from the corner of her eyes. “What are you doing now?”

“I’m the quickest shirtwaist hand on the floor. But my heart wastes away by such work. I think and think, and my thoughts can’t come out.”

“Why don’t you think out your thoughts in shirtwaists? You could learn to be a designer. Earn more money.”

“I don’t want to look on waists. If my hands are sick from waists, how could my head learn to put beauty into them?”

“But you must earn your living at what you know, and rise slowly from job to job.”

I looked at her office sign: “Vocational Guidance.” “What’s your vocational guidance?” I asked. “How to rise from job to job--how to earn more money?”

The smile went out from her eyes. But she tried to be kind yet. “What _do_ you want?” she asked, with a sigh of lost patience.

“I want America to want me.”

She fell back in her chair, thunderstruck with my boldness. But yet, in a low voice of educated self-control, she tried to reason with me:

“You have to _show_ that you have something special for America before America has need of you.”

“But I never had a chance to find out what’s in me, because I always had to work for a living. Only, I feel it’s efficiency for America to find out what’s in me so different, so I could give it out by my work.”

Her eyes half closed as they bored through me. Her mouth opened to speak, but no words came from her lips. So I flamed up with all that was choking in me like a house on fire:

“America gives free bread and rent to criminals in prison. They got grand houses, with sunshine, fresh air, doctors and teachers, even for the crazy ones. Why don’t they have free boarding-schools for immigrants--strong people--willing people? Here you see us burning up with something different, and America turns its head away from us.”

Her brows lifted and dropped down. She shrugged her shoulders away from me with the look of pity we give to cripples and hopeless lunatics.

“America is no Utopia. First you must become efficient in earning a living before you can indulge in your poetic dreams.”

I went away from the vocational guidance office with all the air out of my lungs. All the light out of my eyes. My feet dragged after me like dead wood.

Till now there had always lingered a rosy veil of hope over my emptiness, a hope that a miracle would happen. I would open up my eyes some day and suddenly find the America of my dreams. As a young girl hungry for love sees always before her eyes the picture of lover’s arms around her, so I saw always in my heart the vision of Utopian America.

But now I felt that the America of my dreams never was and never could be. Reality had hit me on the head as with a club. I felt that the America that I sought was nothing but a shadow--an echo--a chimera of lunatics and crazy immigrants.

Stripped of all illusion, I looked about me. The long desert of wasting days of drudgery stared me in the face. The drudgery that I had lived through, and the endless drudgery still ahead of me rose over me like a withering wilderness of sand. In vain were all my cryings, in vain were all frantic efforts of my spirit to find the living waters of understanding for my perishing lips. Sand, sand was everywhere. With every seeking, every reaching out I only lost myself deeper and deeper in a vast sea of sand.

I knew now the American language. And I knew now, if I talked to the Americans from morning till night, they could not understand what the Russian soul of me wanted. They could not understand _me_ any more than if I talked to them in Chinese. Between my soul and the American soul were worlds of difference that no words could bridge over. What was that difference? What made the Americans so far apart from me?

I began to read the American history. I found from the first pages that America started with a band of courageous Pilgrims. They had left their native country as I had left mine. They had crossed an unknown ocean and landed in an unknown country, as I.

But the great difference between the first Pilgrims and me was that they expected to make America, build America, create their own world of liberty. I wanted to find it ready-made.

I read on. I delved deeper down into the American history. I saw how the Pilgrim Fathers came to a rocky desert country, surrounded by Indian savages on all sides. But undaunted, they pressed on--through danger--through famine, pestilence, and want--they pressed on. They did not ask the Indians for sympathy, for understanding. They made no demands on anybody, but on their own indomitable spirit of persistence.

And I--I was for ever begging a crumb of sympathy, a gleam of understanding from strangers who could not sympathize, who could not understand.

I, when I encountered a few savage Indian scalpers, like the old witch of the sweat-shop, like my “Americanized” countryman, who cheated me of my wages--I, when I found myself on the lonely, untrodden path through which all seekers of the new world must pass, I lost heart and said: “There is no America!”

Then came a light--a great revelation! I saw America--a big idea--a deathless hope--a world still in the making. I saw that it was the glory of America that it was not yet finished. And I, the last comer, had her share to give, small or great, to the making of America, like those Pilgrims who came in the _Mayflower_.

Fired up by this revealing light, I began to build a bridge of understanding between the American-born and myself. Since their life was shut out from such as me, I began to open up my life and the lives of my people to them. And life draws life. In only writing about the Ghetto I found America.

Great chances have come to me. But in my heart is always a deep sadness. I feel like a man who is sitting down to a secret table of plenty, while his near ones and dear ones are perishing before his eyes. My very joy in doing the work I love hurts me like secret guilt, because all about me I see so many with my longings, my burning eagerness, to do and to be, wasting their days in drudgery they hate, merely to buy bread and pay rent. And America is losing all that richness of the soul.

The Americans of to-morrow, the America that is every day nearer coming to be, will be too wise, too open-hearted, too friendly-handed, to let the least last-comer at their gates knock in vain with his gifts unwanted.

A BED FOR THE NIGHT

A drizzling rain had begun to fall. I was wet and chilled to the bone. I had just left the free ward of a hospital, where I had been taken when ill with the flu. It was good to be home again! Even though what I called home were but the dim, narrow halls of a lodging-house. With a sigh of relief, I dropped my suitcase in the vestibule.

As the door swung open, the landlady met me with: “Your room is taken. Your things are in the cellar.”

“My room?” I stammered, white with fear.

“Oh no--please, Mrs. Pelz!”

“I got a chance to rent your room at such a good price, I couldn’t afford to hold it.”

“But you promised to keep it for me while I was away. And I paid you for it----”

“The landlord raised me my rent and I got to get it out from the roomers,” she defended. “I got four hungry mouths to feed----”

“But maybe I would have paid you a little more,” I pleaded. “If you had only told me. I have to go back to work to-day. How can I get another room at a moment’s notice?”

“We all got to look out for ourselves. I am getting more than twice as much as you paid me from this new lodger,” she finished triumphantly. “And no housekeeping privileges.”

“You must give me time!” My voice rose into a shriek. “You can’t put a girl out into the street at a moment’s notice. There are laws in America----”

“There are no laws for roomers.”

“No law for roomers?” All my weakness and helplessness rushed out of me in a fury of rebellion. “No law for roomers?”

“I could have put your things out in the street when your week was up. But being you were sick, I was kind enough to keep them in the cellar. But your room is taken,” she said with finality. “I got to let my rooms to them as pay the most. I got to feed my own children first. I can’t carry the whole world on my back.”

I tried to speak. But no voice came to my lips. I felt struck with a club on the head. I could only stare at her. And I must have been staring for some time without seeing her, for I had not noticed she had gone till I heard a voice from the upper stairs, “Are you still here?”

“Oh--yes--yes--I--I--am--going--go-ing.” I tried to rouse my stunned senses, which seemed struck to the earth.

“There’s no money in letting rooms to girls,” my landlady continued, as she came down to open the door for me. “They’re always cooking, or washing, or ironing and using out my gas. This new roomer I never hear nor see except in the morning when he goes to work and at night when he comes to sleep.”

I staggered out in a bewildered daze. I leaned against the cold iron lamp-post. It seemed so kind, so warm. Even the chill, drizzling rain beating on my face was almost human. Slowly, my numbed brain began to recollect where I was. Where should I turn? To whom? I faced an endless maze of endless streets. All about me strangers--seas of jostling strangers. I was alone--shelterless!

All that I had suffered in lodging-houses rushed over me. I had never really lived or breathed like a free, human being. My closed door assured me no privacy. I lived in constant dread of any moment being pounced upon by my landlady for daring to be alive. I dared not hang out my clothes on a line in the fresh air. I was forced to wash and dry them stealthily, at night, over chairs and on my trunk. I was under the same restraint when I did my simple cooking although I paid dearly for the gas I used.

This ceaseless strain of don’t move here and don’t step there was far from my idea of home. But still it was shelter from the streets. I had almost become used to it. I had almost learned not to be crushed by it. Now, I was shut out--kicked out like a homeless dog.

All thought of reporting at my office left my mind. I walked and walked, driven by despair. Tears pressed in my throat, but my eyes were dry as sand.

I tried to struggle out of my depression. I looked through the furnished room sections of the city. There were no cheap rooms to be had. The prices asked for the few left were ten, twelve and fifteen dollars a week.

I earn twenty-five dollars a week as a stenographer. I am compelled to dress neatly to hold down my job. And with clothes and food so high, how could I possibly pay more than one-third of my salary for rent?

In my darkness I saw a light--a vision of the settlement. As an immigrant I had joined one of the social clubs there, and I remembered there was a residence somewhere in that building for the workers. Surely they would take me in till I had found a place to live.

“I’m in such trouble!” I stammered, as I entered the office of the head resident. “My landlady put me out because I couldn’t pay the raise in rent.”

“The housing problem is appalling,” Miss Ward agreed with her usual professional friendliness. “I wish I could let you stay with us, my child, but our place is only for social workers.”

“Where should I go?” I struggled to keep back my tears. “I’m so terribly alone.”

“Now--now, dear child,” Miss Ward patted my shoulder encouragingly. “You mustn’t give way like that. Of course, I’ll give you the addresses of mothers of our neighbourhood.”

One swift glance at the calm, well-fed face and I felt instantly that Miss Ward had never known the terror of homelessness.

“You know, dear, I want to help you all I can,” smiled Miss Ward, trying to be kind, “and I’m always glad when my girls come to me.”

“What was the use of my coming to you?” I was in no mood for her make-believe settlement smile. “If you don’t take me in, aren’t you pushing me in the street--joining hands with my landlady?”

“Why--my dear!” The mask of smiling kindness dropped from Miss Ward’s face. Her voice cooled. “Surely you will find a room in this long list of addresses I am giving you.”

I went to a dozen places. It was the same everywhere. No rooms were to be had at the price I could afford.

Crushed again and again, the habit of hope still asserted itself. I suddenly remembered there was one person from whom I was almost sure of getting help--an American woman who had befriended me while still an immigrant in the factory. Her money had made it possible for me to take up the stenographic course. Full of renewed hope, I sped along the streets. My buoyant faith ever expectant could think of one outcome only.

Mrs. Olney had just finished dictating to her secretary, when the maid ushered me into the luxurious library.

“How good it is to see you! What can I do for you?” The touch of Mrs. Olney’s fine hand, the sound of her lovely voice was like the warming breath of sunshine to a frozen thing. A choking came in my throat. Tears blinded me.

“If it wasn’t a case of life and death, I wouldn’t have bothered you so early in the morning.”

“What’s the trouble, my child?” Mrs. Olney was all concern.