Chapter IV: Part 4

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."