Chapter III: Part 3

And now the servants of the water demon, the firemen, dismayed and excited, fall back a pace, only to return and with the strength of water at their command assail the power of the fire again. Streams of water are now spouting from a score of nozzles. A group of eight firemen, guided by a rotund battalion chief who is speaking through a trumpet, ascends the steps of a nearby doorway and gropes its way through the dark halls to apartments where frightened human beings may be cowering, too crazed by fear to undertake to rescue themselves. Another group of eight is to be seen working its way with scaling ladders to the roof of another building. They carry ropes which they hang over the eaves, thus constructing a means of egress for those who are willing and hardy enough to lay hold and descend in this fashion. Still another group of eight is spreading a net into which hovering, fear-crazed victims calling from windows above are commanded to jump. Through it all the regular puffing of the engines, the muffled voices of the captains shouting, and the rattling beat of the water as it plays upon the walls and batters its way through the windows and doors, can be heard as a monotone, the chorus of this grand contest in which man seeks for mastery over an element.

And yet the fire continues to burn. It catches a dressmaker who has occupied the rear rooms of the third floor of the building, two doors away from that of the paint-dealer’s shop, and while she is still waving frantically for aid she is enveloped with a glorious golden shroud of fire which hides her completely. It rushes to where a lame flower-maker, Ziltman, is groping agonizedly before his windows on the fifth floor of another tenement, and sends into his nostrils a volume of thick smoke which smothers him entirely. It sends long streamers of flame licking about doorposts and window frames of still other buildings, filling stairways and area-landings with great dark clouds of vapor and bursting forth in lurid, sinister flashes from nooks and corners where up to now fire has not been suspected. It appears to be an all-devouring Nemesis, feeding as a hungry lion upon this ruck of wooden provender and this wealth of human life. The bodies of stricken human beings are but fuel for it--but small additions to its spirals of smoke and its tongues of flame.

And yet these battalions of fighters are not to be discouraged. They guess this element to be a blind one, indifferent alike to failure or success. It may rage on and consume the whole city. It may soon be compelled to slink back to a smoldering heap. It appears to desire to burn fiercely, and yet they know that it will give way before its logical foe. Upon it, now, they are heaping a score of streams, beating at distant windows, tearing out distant doors, knocking the bricks from their plastered places, of houses not on fire at all and so setting up a barrier between it and other buildings, destroying in fact the form and order of years in order to make a common level upon which its enemy, water, can meet and defeat it.

But these little ants of beings, how they have scurried before this battle royal between these two elements! How fallen! How harried and bereft and tortured they seem! Under these now blackened and charred timbers and fallen bricks and stones and twisted plates of iron are not a few of them, dead. And beyond the still tempestuous battlefield, where flame and water still fight, are thousands more of them, agape with wonder and fear and pity. They do not know what water is, nor fire. They only know what they do, how dangerous they are, how really deadly and how indifferent to their wishes or desires. Forefend! forefend! is the wisest thought that comes to them, else these twain, and other strange and terrible things like them, will devour us all.

But these elements. Here they are and here they continue to battle until a given quantity of water has been able to overcome a given amount of fire. Like the fabled battle between the Efrit and the King’s daughter, they have fought each other over rooftops and in cellars and in the very air, where flame and water meet, and under twisted piles of timber and iron and stone. Wherever any of the snaky heads of the demon fire have shown themselves, the flattened gusts of the demon water have assailed them. The two have fought in crevices where no human hand could reach. They have grappled with one another in titanic writhings above the rooftops, where the eyes of all men could see. They have followed one another to unexpected depths, fire showing itself wherever water has neglected to remain, the water returning where the fire has begun its battling anew. They have chased and twisted and turned, until at last, out-generaled in this instance, fire has receded and water conquered all.

But the petty little creatures who have been the victims of their contest, the chance occupants of the field upon which they chose to battle. But look at them now, agape with wonder and terror. And how they scurried! How jumped from the windows into nets, how clambered like monkeys down ladders, how gropingly they have staggered through halls of smoke, thick, rich smoke, as dark and soft and smooth as the fleece of a ram and as deadly as death.

And now small men, shocked by all that has befallen, gather and congratulate themselves on their victory or meditate on and bemoan their losses. The terror of it all!

“I say, John,” says the battalion chief of the second division to the battalion chief of the first, “that was something of a fire, eh?”

“It was that,” agrees the latter, looking grimly from under the rim of his wet red helmet.

“That Dutchman must have had a half-dozen barrels of naphtha or gasoline down there to cause such a blowup as that. Why, that last blast, just before I got here, sent the roof off, they tell me.”

“It did that,” returns the other thoughtfully. “There’ll be a big rumpus about it in the papers to-morrow. They ought to inspect these places better.”

“That’s right. Well, he got his fill. His wife’s down there now, I think, and his baby. He ain’t been seen since the first explosion.”

“Too bad. But they oughtn’t to do such things. They know the danger of it. Still, you never can tell ’em nothin’.”

THE CAR YARD

If I were a painter one of the first things I would paint would be one or another of the great railroad yards that abound in every city, those in New York and Chicago being as interesting as any. Only I fear that my brush would never rest with one portrait. There would be pictures of it in sunshine and cloud, in rain and snow, in light and dark, and when heat caused the rails and the cars to bake and shimmer, and the bitter cold the mixture of smoke and steam to ascend in tall, graceful, rhythmic plumes that appear to be composed of superimposed circles and spirals of smoke and mist.

The variety of the cars. The variety of their contents. The long distances and differing climates and countries from which they have come--the Canadian snows, the Mexican uplands, Florida, California, Texas and Maine. As a boy, in the different cities and towns in which our family dwelt, I was forever arrested by the spectacle of these great freight trains, yellow, white, red, blue, green, toiling through or dissipating themselves in some terminal maze of tracks. I was always interested to note how certain cars, having reached their destination, would be sidetracked and left, and then presently the consignee or his agent or expressman would appear and the car be opened. Ice, potatoes, beef, furniture, machinery, boxed shipments of all kinds, would be taken out by some lone worker who, having come with a wagon, would back it up to the opened door and remove the contents. Most interesting of all to me were the immense shipments of live stock, the pigs, sheep, steers, on their last fatal journey and looking so non-understandingly out upon the strange world in which they found themselves, and baa-ing or moo-ing or squealing in tones that gave evidence of the uncertainty, the distress and the wonder that was theirs.

For a time in Chicago, between my eighteenth and nineteenth years, I was employed as a car-tracer in one of the great freight terminals of a railroad entering Chicago, a huge, windy, forsaken realm far out on the great prairie west of the city and harboring literally a thousand or more cars. And into it and from it would move such long freight trains, heavy with snow occasionally, or drenched with rain, and presenting such a variety of things in cars: coal, iron, cattle, beef, which would here be separated and entangled with or disentangled from many others and then moved on again in the form of other long trains. The clanging engine bells, the puffing stacks, the arresting, colorful brakemen and trainmen in their caps, short, thick coats, dirty gloves, and with their indispensable lanterns over their arms. In December and January, when the days were short and the nights fell early, I found myself with long lists of car numbers, covering cars in transit and concerning which or their contents owners or shippers were no doubt anxious, hurrying here and there, now up and down long tracks, or under or between the somber cars that lined them, studying by the aid of my lantern the tags and car numbers, seeing if the original labels or addresses were still intact, whether the seals had remained unbroken, on what track the car was, and about where, and checking these various items on the slip given me, and, all being correct, writing O. K. across the face of it all. Betimes I would find a consigned car already in place on some far sidetrack, the consignee having already been notified, and some lone worker with a wagon busily removing the contents. Sometimes, being in doubt, I would demand to see the authorization, and then report. But except for occasional cars, that however accurately billed never seemed to appear, no other thing went wrong.

Subsequent to that time I have always been interested by these great tangles. Seeing them as in New York facing river banks where ships await their cargoes, or surrounded by the tall coal pockets and grain elevators of a crowded commercial section, I have often thought how typical of the shift and change of life they are, how peculiarly of this day and no other. Imagine a Roman, a Greek, an Egyptian or an Assyrian being shown one of these immense freight yards with their confusing mass of cars, their engines, bells, spirals of smoke and steam, their interesting variety of color, form and movement. How impossible to explain to such an one the mechanism if not the meaning of it all. How impossible it would be for him to identify what he saw with anything that he knew. The mysterious engines, the tireless switching, the lights, the bells, the vehicles, the trainmen and officials. And as far as some future age that yet may be is concerned, all that one sees here or that relates to this form of transportation may even in the course of a few hundred years have vanished as completely as have the old caravanseries of the Orient--rails, cars, engines, coal and smoke and steam, even the intricate processes by which present freight exchange is effected. And something entirely different may have come in its place, transportation by air, for instance, the very mechanism of flight and carriage directed by wireless from given centers.

And yet, as far as life itself is concerned, its strife and change, how typical of it are these present great yards with their unending evidences of movement and change. These cars that come and go, how heavy now with freight, or import; how empty now of anything suggesting service or use even, standing like idle, unneeded persons upon some desolate track, while the thunder of life and exchange passes far to one side. And anon, as in life, each and every one of them finds itself in the very thick of life, thundering along iron rails from city to city, themselves, or rather their contents, eagerly awaited and welcomed and sought after, and again left, as before. And then the old cars, battered and sway-backed by time and the elements and long service, standing here and there unused and useless, their chassis bent and sometimes cracked by undue strain or rust, their sides bulging, their roofs and doors decayed and warped or broken, quite ready for that limbo of old cars, the junk yard rather than the repair shop.

And yet they have been so useful, have seen and done so much, been in such varied and interesting places--the cities, the towns, the country stations, the lone sidings where they have waited or rolled in sun and rain. Here in this particular New York yard over which I am now brooding, upon a great viaduct which commands it all, is one old car, recently emptied of its load of grain, about which on this winter’s day a flock of colorful pigeons are rising and falling, odd companions for such a lumbering and cumbersome thing, yet so friendly to and companionable with it, some of them walking peacefully upon its roof, others picking up remaining grains within its open door, others on the snowy ground before it picking still other fallen grains, and not at all disturbed by the puffing engines elsewhere. It might as well be a great boat accompanied by a cloud of gulls. And that other car there, that dusty, yellow one, labeled Central of Georgia, yet from which now a great wagonful of Christmas trees is being taken from Georgia, or where? Has it been to Maine or Labrador or the Canadian north for these, and where will it go, from here, and how soon? Leaning upon this great viaduct that crosses this maze of tracks and commands so many of them, a great and interesting spectacle, I am curious as to the history or the lives of these cars, each and every one, the character of the places and lives among which each and every one of them has passed its days. They appear so wooden, so lumpish, so inert and cumbersome and yet the places they have been, the things they have seen!

I am told by the physicists that each and every atom of all of this wealth of timber and steel before me is as alive as life; that it consists, each and every particle, of a central spicule of positive energy about which revolve at great speed lesser spicules of negative energy. And so these same continue to revolve until each particular atom, for some chemic or electronic reason, shall have been dissolved, when forthwith these spicules re-arrange themselves into new forms, to revolve as industriously and as unceasingly as before. Springs the thought then: Is anything inert, lacking in response, perception, mood? And if not, what may each of these individual cars with their wealth of experience and observation think of this life, their place in it, their journeys and their strange and equally restless and unknowing companion, man?

THE FLIGHT OF PIGEONS

In all the city there is no more beautiful sight than that which is contributed by the flight of pigeons. You may see them flying in one place and another, here over the towering stacks of some tall factory, there over the low roofs of some workaday neighborhood; the yard of a laborer, the roof of some immense office building, the eaves of a shed or barn furnishing them shelter and a point of rendezvous from which they sail. I have seen them at morning, when the sky was like silver, turning in joyous circles so high that the size of a large flock of forty was no more than a hand’s breadth. I have seen them again at evening, wheeling and turning in a light which was amethystine in its texture, so soft that they seemed swimming in a world of dream. In the glow of a radiant sunset, against the bosom of lowering storm clouds, when the turn of a wing made them look like a handful of snowflakes, or the shafts of the evening sunlight turned their bodies to gold, I have watched them soaring, soaring, soaring, running like children, laughing down the bosom of the wind, wheeling, shifting, rising, falling, the one idyllic note in a world of commonplace--or, perhaps more truthfully, the key central of what is a heavenly scene of beauty.

I do not know what it is that makes pigeons so interesting to me, unless it is that this flight of theirs into the upper world is to me the essence of things poetic, the one thing which I should like to do myself. The sunny sides of the barnyard roofs they occupy, the quiet beauty of the yards in which they live, their graceful and contented acceptance of the simple and the commonplace, their cooing ease, the charm of the landscapes over which they fly and against the outlines of which they are so often artistically engraved, are to me of the essence of the beautiful. I can think of nothing better. If I were to have the privilege of reincarnation I might even choose to be a pigeon.

And, in connection with this, I have so often asked myself what there is in pure motion which is so delightful, so enchanting, and before the mystery of which, as manifested by the flight of pigeons my mind pauses, for it finds no ready solution. The poetry of music, the poetry of motion, the arch-significance of a graceful line in flight--these are of psychic, perhaps of chemic subtlety (who knows?), blending into some great scheme of universal rhythm, of which singing, dancing, running, flying, the sinuous curvings of rivers, the rhythmic wavings of trees, the blowings and restings of the winds, and every other lovely thing of which the earth is heir, are but integral parts.

Nature has many secrets all her own. We peer and search. With her ill moods we quarrel. Over her savageries we weep or rage. In her amethystine hours of ease and rest we rest also and wonder, moved to profound and regal melancholy over our own brief hours in her light, to unreasoned joy and laughter over her beauty in her better moods, their pensive exaltation.

As for myself, I only know that whenever I see these birds, their coats of fused slate and bright metallic colors shielding them so smoothly, their feet of coral, their eyes of liquid black, smooth-rimmed with pink, and strutting so soberly at ease on every barn roof or walk or turning, awing, in some heavenly light against a sky of blue or storm-black--I only know that once more a fugue of most delicate and airy mood is being fingered, that the rendition of another song is at hand.

To fly so! To be a part of sky, sunlight, air! To be thus so delicately and gracefully organized as to be able to rest upon the bosom of a breeze, or run down its curving surface in long flights, to have the whole world-side for a spectacle, the sunny roof of a barn or a house for a home! Not to brood over the immensities, perhaps, not to sigh over the too-well-known end!

Fold you your hands and gaze.... They speak of joy accomplished. Fold your hands and gaze. As you look you have that which they bring--beauty. It is without flaw and without price.

ON BEING POOR

Poverty is so relative. I have lived to be thirty-two now, and am just beginning to find that out. Hitherto, in no vague way, poverty to me seemed to be indivisibly united with the lack of money. And this in the face of a long series of experiences which should have proved to any sane person that this was only relatively true. Without money, or at times with so little that an ordinary day laborer would have scoffed at my supply, I still found myself meditating gloomily and with much show of reason upon the poverty of others. But what I was really complaining of, if I had only known, was not poverty of material equipment (many of those whom I pitied were materially as well if not better supplied than I was) but poverty of mind, the most dreadful and inhibiting and destroying of all forms of poverty. There are others, of course: Poverty of strength, of courage, of skill. And in respect to no one of these have I been rich, but poverty of mind, of the understanding, of taste, of imagination--therein lies the true misery, the freezing degradation of life.

For I walk through the streets of this great city--so many of them no better than the one in which I live--and see thousands upon thousands, materially no worse off than myself, many of them much better placed, yet with whom I would not change places save under conditions that could not be met, the principal one being that I be permitted to keep my own mind, my own point of view. For here comes one whose clothes are good but tasteless, or dirty; and I would not have his taste or his dirt. And here is another whose shabby quarters cost him as much as do mine and more, and yet I would not live in the region which he chooses for half his rent, nor have his mistaken notion of what is order, beauty, comfort. Nothing short of force could compel me. And here is one sufficiently well dressed and housed, as well dressed and housed as myself, who still consorts with friends from whom I could take no comfort, creatures of so poor a mentality that it would be torture to associate with them.

And yet how truly poor, materially, I really am. For over a year now the chamber in which I dwell has cost me no more than four dollars a week. My clothes, with the exception of such minor changes as ties and linen, are the very same I have had for several years. I am so poor at this writing that I have not patronized a theater in months. A tasteful restaurant such as always I would prefer has this long while been beyond my purse. I have even been beset by a nervous depression which has all but destroyed my power to write, or to sell that which I might write. And, as I well know, illness and death might at any time interfere and cut short the struggle that in my case has thus far proved materially most profitless; and yet, believe me, I have never felt poor, or that I have been cheated of much that life might give. Nor have I felt that sense of poverty that appears to afflict thousands of those about me.

I cannot go to a theater, for instance, lacking the means. But I can and do go to many of the many, many museums, exhibits, collections and arboreta that are open to me for nothing in this great city. And for greater recreation even, I turn to such books of travel, of discovery, of scientific and philosophic investigation and speculation as chance to fit in with my mood at the time and with which a widespread public beneficence has provided me, and where I find such pleasure, such relief, such delight as I should hesitate to attempt to express in words.

But apart from these, which are after all but reports of and commentaries upon the other, comes the beauty of life itself. I know it to be a shifting, lovely, changeful thing ever, and to it, the spectacle of it as a whole, in my hours of confusion and uncertainty I invariably return, and find such marvels of charm in color, tone, movement, arrangement, which, had I the genius to report, would fill the museums and the libraries of the world to overflowing with its masterpieces. The furies of snow and rain that speed athwart a hidden sun. The wracks and wisps of cloud that drape a winter or a summer moon. A distant, graceful tower from which a flock of pigeons soar. The tortuous, tideful rivers that twist among great forests of masts and under many graceful bridges. The crowding, surging ways of seeking men. These cost me nothing, and I weary of them never.

And sunsets. And sunrises. And moonsets. And moonrises. These are not things to which those materially deficient would in the main turn for solace, but to me they are substances of solace, the major portion of all my wealth or possible wealth, in exchange for which I would not take a miser’s hoard. I truly would not.

SIX O’CLOCK

The hours in which the world is working are numerous and always fascinating. It is not the night-time or the Sabbath or the day of pleasure that counts, but the day’s work. Whether it be as statesman or soldier, poet or laborer, the day’s work is the thing. And at the end of the day’s work, in its commoner forms at least, comes the signal of its accomplishment, the whistle, the bell, the fading light, the arresting face of the clock.

To me, personally, there is no hour which quite equals that which heralds the close of the day’s toil. I know, too, that others are important, the getting up and lying down of men, but this of ceasing after a day’s work, when we lay down the ax or the saw, or the pen or pencil, stay our machine, take off our apron and quit--that is wonderful. Others may quit earlier. The lawyer and the merchant and the banker may cease their labors an hour earlier. The highly valued clerk or official is not opposed if he leaves at four-thirty or at five, and at five-thirty skilled labor generally may cease. But at six o’clock the rank and file are through, “the great unwashed,” as they have been derisively termed, the real laboring man and laboring woman. It is for them then that the six o’clock whistle blows; that the six o’clock bell strikes; it is for them that the evening lamps are lit in millions of homes; it is for them that the blue smoke of an evening fire curls upward at nightfall and that the street cars and vehicles of transfer run thick and black.

The streets are pouring with them at six o’clock. They are as a great tide in the gray and dark. They come bearing their baskets and buckets, their armfuls of garnered wood, their implements of labor and of accomplishment, and their faces streaked with the dirt of their toil. While you and I, my dear sir, have been sitting at our ease this last hour they have been working, and where we began at nine they began at seven. They have worked all day, not from seven-thirty until five-thirty or from nine until four, but from seven to six, and they are weary.

You can see it in their faces. Some have a lean, pinched appearance as though they were but poorly nourished or greatly enervated. Some have a furtive, hurried look, as though the problem of rent and food and clothing were inexplicable and they were thinking about it all the time. Some are young yet and unscathed--the most are young (for the work of the world is done by the youth of the world)--and they do not see as yet to what their labor tends. Nearly all are still lightened with a sense of opportunity; for what may the world not hold in store? Are not its bells still tinkling, its lights twinkling? Are not youth and health and love the solvents of all our woes?

These crowds when the whistles blow come as great movements of the sea come. If you stand in the highways of traffic they are at once full to overflowing. If you watch the entrance to great mills they pour forth a living stream, dark, energetic, undulant. To see them melting away into the highways and byways is like seeing a stream tumble and sparkle, like listening to the fading echoes of a great bell. They come, vivid, vibrant, like a deep, full-throated note. They go again as bell notes finally go.

If you stand at the entrance of one of our great industrial institutions you may see for yourself. Its walls are like those of a prison, tall, dark, many-windowed; its sound like that of a vast current of water pouring over a precipice. Inside a thousand or a hundred thousand shuttles may be crashing; I know not. Patient figures are hurrying to and fro. You may see them through the brightly lighted windows of a winter’s night. Suddenly the great whistle sounds somewhere in the thick of the city. Then another and another. In a moment a score and a hundred siren voices are calling out the hour of cessation and the rush of the great world of machinery is stilling. The figures disappear from the machines. The tiny doors at the bottom of the walls open. Out they come, hurrying, white-faced, black-shawled, the vast contingent of men and boys, girls and children; into the black night they hurry, the fresh winds sweeping about their insignificant figures. This is but one mill and all over the world as the planet rolls eastward these whistles are blowing, the factories are ceasing, the figures are pouring forth.

It is on such as these, O students of economics, that all our fine-spun fancies of life are based. It is on such as these that our statecraft is erected. Kings sit in palaces, statesmen confer in noble halls, because of these and such as these. The science of government--it _is_ because of these. The art of production--it is by and for these. The importance of distribution--it concerns these. All our carefully woven theories of morals, of health, of property--they have these for their being; without them they are not.

The world runs with a rushing tide of life these days. It has broken forth into a veritable storm of creation. Men are born by the millions. They die in great masses silently. To-day they are here, to-morrow cut down and put away. But in these crowds of workers we see the flower of it all, the youth, the enthusiasm, the color. Life is here at its highest, not death. There are no sick here: they have dropped out. There are no halt, or very few, no lame. All the weaklings have been cut down and there remains here, running in a hurrying, sparkling stream, the energy, the strength, the hope of the world. That they may not be too hardly used is obvious, for then life itself ceases; that they may not be too utterly brutalized is sure, for then life itself becomes too brutal for endurance. That they may only be driven in part is a material truism. They cannot be driven too far; they must be led in part. For that the maxim, “Feed my sheep.”

But in the spectacle of living there is none other like this. It is all that life may ever be, energetic, hungry, eager. It is the hope of the world, and the yearning of the world concentrated. Here are passion, desire, despair, running eagerly away. The great whistles of the world sound their presence nightly. The sinking of the sun marks their sure approach. It is six o’clock, and the work of the day is ended--for the night.

THE TOILERS OF THE TENEMENTS

New York City has one hundred thousand people who, under unfavorable conditions, work with their fingers for so little money that they are understood, even by the uninitiated general public, to form a class by themselves. These are by some called sewing-machine workers, by others tenement toilers, and by still others sweatshop employees; but, in a general sense, the term, tenement workers, includes them all. They form a great section in one place, and in others little patches, ministered to by storekeepers and trade agents who are as much underpaid and nearly as hard-working as they themselves.

Go into any one of these areas and you will encounter a civilization that is as strange and un-American as if it were not included in this land at all. Pushcarts and market-stalls are among the most distinctive features. Little stores and grimy windows are also characteristic of these sections. There is an atmosphere of crowdedness and poverty which goes with both. Any one can see that these people are living energetically. There is something about the hurry and enthusiasm of their life that reminds you of ants.

If you stay and turn your attention from the traffic proper, the houses begin to attract your attention. They are nearly all four-story or five-story buildings, with here and there one of six, and still another of seven stories; all without elevators, and all, with the exception of the last, exceedingly old. There are narrow entrance-ways, dingy and unlighted, which lead up dark and often rickety stairs. There are other alley-ways, which lead, like narrow tunnels, to rear tenements and back shops. Iron fire escapes descend from the roof to the first floor, in every instance, because the law compels it. Iron stairways sometimes ascend, where no other means of entrance is to be had. There are old pipes which lead upward and carry water. No such thing as sanitary plumbing exists. You will not often see a gas-light in a hall in as many as two blocks of houses. You will not see one flat in ten with hot and cold water arrangements. Other districts have refrigerators and stationary washstands, and bath tubs as a matter of course, but these people do not know what modern conveniences mean. Steam heat and hot and cold water tubs and sinks have never been installed in this area.

The houses are nearly all painted a dull red, and nearly all are divided in the most unsanitary manner. Originally they were built five rooms deep, with two flats on a floor, but now the single flats have been subdivided and two or three, occasionally four or five, families live and toil in the space which was originally intended for one. There are families so poor, or so saving and unclean, that they huddle with other families, seven or eight persons in two rooms. Iron stands covered by plain boards make a bed which can be enlarged or reduced at will. When night comes, four, five, six, sometimes seven such people stretch out on these beds. When morning comes the bedclothes, if such they may be called, are cleared away and the board basis is used as a table. One room holds the stove, the cooking utensils, the chairs, and the sewing machine. The other contains the bed, the bed-clothing, and various kinds of stored material. Eating, sleeping, and usually some washing are done there.

I am giving the extreme instances, unfortunately common to the point of being numerous. In the better instances three or four people are housed in two rooms. How many families there are that live less closely quartered than this would not be very easy to say. On the average, five people live in two rooms. A peddler or a pushcart man who can get to where he can occupy two rooms, by having his wife and children work, is certain that he is doing well. Fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, go out to work. If the father cannot get work and the mother can, then that is the order of procedure. If the daughter cannot get work and the mother and father can, it is the daughter’s duty to take care of the house and take in sewing. If any of the boys and girls are too young to go out and enter the shops, duty compels them to help on the piecework that is taken into the rooms. Everything is work, in one form or another, from morning until night.

As for the people themselves, they are a strange mixture of all races and all creeds. Day after day you will see express wagons and trucks leaving the immigration station at the Battery, loaded to crowding with the latest arrivals, who are being taken as residents to one or another colony of this crowded section. There are Greeks, Italians, Russians, Poles, Syrians, Armenians and Hungarians. Jews are so numerous that they have to be classified with the various nations whose language they speak. All are poverty-stricken, all venturing into this new world to make their living. The vast majority have absolutely nothing more than the ten dollars which the immigration inspectors are compelled to see that they have when they arrive. These people recruit the territory in question.

In the same hundred thousand, and under the same tenement conditions, are many who are not foreign-born. I know personally of American fathers who have got down to where it is necessary to work as these foreigners work. There are home-grown American mothers who have never been able to lift themselves above the conditions in which they find themselves to-day. Thousands of children born and reared in New York City are growing up under conditions which would better become a slum section of Constantinople.

I know a chamber in this section where, at a plain wooden bench or table, sits a middle-aged Hungarian and his wife, with a fifteen-year-old daughter, sewing. The Hungarian is perhaps not honestly Gentile, for he looks as if he might have Hebrew blood in his veins. The mother and the daughter partake of a dark olive tinge, more characteristic of the Italian than of anything else. It must be a coincidence, however, for these races rarely mix. Between them and upon a nearby chair are piled many pairs of trousers, all awaiting their labor. Two buckles and a button must be sewed on every one. The rough edges at the bottom must be turned up and basted, and the inside about the top must be lined with a kind of striped cotton which is already set loosely in place. It is their duty to sew closely with their hands what is already basted. No machine worker can do this work, and so it is sent out to such as these, under the practice of tenement distribution. Their duty is to finish it.

There would be no need to call attention to these people except that in this instance they have unwittingly violated the law. Tenement workers, under the new dispensation, cannot do exactly as they please. It is not sufficient for them to have an innate and necessitous desire to work. They must work under special conditions. Thus, it is now written that the floors must be clean and the ceilings whitewashed. There must not be any dirt on the walls. No room in which they work must have such a thing as a bed in it, and no three people may ever work together in one room. Law and order prescribe that one is sufficient. These others--father and daughter, or mother and daughter, or mother and father--should go out into the shops, leaving just one here to work. Such is the law.

These three people, who have only these two trades, have complied with scarcely any of these provisions. The room is not exactly as clean as it should be. The floor is dirty. Overhead is a smoky ceiling, and in one corner is a bed. The two small windows before which they labor do not give sufficient ventilation, and so the air in the chamber is stale. Worst of all, they are working three in a chamber, and have no license.

“How now,” asks an inspector, opening the door--for there is very little civility of manner observed by these agents of the law who constantly regulate these people--“any pants being finished here?”

“How?” says the Hungarian, looking purblindly up. It is nothing new to him to have his privacy thus invaded. Unless he has been forewarned and has his door locked, police and detectives, to say nothing of health inspectors and other officials, will frequently stick their heads in or walk in and inquire after one thing or another. Sometimes they go leisurely through his belongings and threaten him for concealing something. There is a general tendency to lord it over and browbeat him, for what reason he has no conception. Other officials do it in the old country; perhaps it is the rule here.

“So,” says the inspector, stepping authoritatively forward, “finishing pants, eh? All three of you? Got a license?”

“Vot?” inquires the pale Hungarian, ceasing his labor.

“Where is your license--your paper? Haven’t you got a paper?”

The Hungarian, who has not been in this form of work long enough to know the rules, puts his elbows on the table and gazes nervously into the newcomer’s face. What is this now that the gentleman wants? His wife looks her own inquiry and speaks of it to her daughter.

“What is it he wants?” says the father to the child.

“It is a paper,” returns the daughter in Hungarian. “He says we must have a license.”

“Paper?” repeats the Hungarian, looking up and shaking his head in the negative. “No.”

“Oh, so you haven’t got a license then? I thought so. Who are you working for?”

The father stares at the child. Seeing that he does not understand, the inspector goes on: “The boss, the boss! What boss gave you these pants to finish?”

“Oh,” returns the little girl, who understands somewhat better than the rest, “the boss, yes. He wants to know what boss gave us these pants.” This last in a foreign tongue to her father.

“Tell him,” says the mother in Hungarian, “that the name is Strakow.”

“Strakow,” repeats the daughter.

“Strakow, eh?” says the inspector. “Well, I’ll see Mr. Strakow. You must not work on these any more. Do you hear? Listen, you,” and he turns the little girl’s face up to him, “you tell your father that he can’t do any more of this work until he gets a license. He must go up to No. 1 Madison Avenue and get a paper. I don’t know whether they’ll give it to him or not, but he can go and ask. Then he must clean this floor. The ceiling must be whitewashed--see?”

The little girl nods her head.

“You can’t keep this bed in here, either,” he adds. “You must move the bed out into the other room if you can. You mustn’t work here. Only one can work here. Two of you must go out into the shop.”

All the time the careworn parents are leaning forward eagerly, trying to catch the drift of what they cannot possibly understand. Both interrupt now and then with a “What is it?” in Hungarian, which the daughter has no time to heed. She is so busy trying to understand half of it herself that there is no time for explanation. Finally she says to her parents:

“He says we cannot all work here.”

“Vot?” says the father. “No vork?”

“No,” replies the daughter. “Three of us can’t work in one room. It’s against the law. Only one. He says that only one can work in this room.”

“How!” he exclaims, as the little girl goes on making vaguely apparent what these orders are. As she proceeds the old fellow’s face changes. His wife leans forward, her whole attitude expressive of keen, sympathetic anxiety.

“No vork?” he repeats. “I do no more vork?”

“No,” insists the inspector, “not with three in one room.”

The Hungarian puts out his right leg, and it becomes apparent that an injury has befallen him. Words he pours upon his daughter, who explains that he has been a pushcart peddler but has received a severe injury to his leg and cannot walk. Helping to sew is all that he can do.

“Well,” says the inspector when he hears of this, “that’s too bad, but I can’t help it. It’s the law. You’ll have to see the department about it. I can’t help it.”

Astonished and distressed, the daughter explains, and then they sit in silence. Five cents a pair is all they have been able to earn since the time the father became expert, and all they can do, working from five in the morning until eleven at night, is two dozen pairs a day--in other words, to earn seven dollars and twenty cents a week. If they delay for anything, as they often must, the income drops to six, and quite often to five, dollars. Two dollars a week is their tax for rent.

“So!” says the father, his mouth open. He is too deeply stricken and nonplussed to know what to do. The mother nervously turns her hands.

“You hear now,” says the inspector, taking out a tag and fastening it upon the goods--“no more work. Go and see the department.”

“How?” asks the father, staring at his helpless family after the door has closed.

How indeed!

In the same round the inspector will come a little later to the shop from which the old Hungarian secured the trousers for finishing. He is armed with full authority over all of these places. In his pocket lie the tags, one of which he puts on a lot of clothing just ordered halted. If that tag is removed it is a penal offense. If it stays on no one can touch the goods until the contractor explains to the factory inspector how he has come to be giving garments for finishing to dwellers in tenements who have not a license. This is a criminal offense on his part. Now he must not touch the clothes he sent over there. If the old Hungarian returns them he must not accept them or pay him any money. This contractor and his clients offer a study in themselves.

His shop is on the third floor of a rear building, which was once used for dwelling purposes but is now given over entirely to clothing manufactories or sweatshops. A flight of dark, ill-odored, rickety stairs gives access to it. There is noise and chatter audible, a thick mixture of sounds from whirring sewing machines and muttering human beings. When you open the door a gray-haired Hebrew, whose long beard rests patriarchally upon his bosom, looks over his shoulders at you from a brick furnace, where he is picking up a reheated iron. Others glance up from their bent positions over machines and ironing-boards. It is a shadowy, hot-odored, floor-littered room.

“Have you a finisher doing work for you by the name of Koslovsky?” inquires the inspector of a thin, bright-eyed Syrian Jew, who is evidently the proprietor of this establishment.

“Koslovsky?” he says after him, in a nervous, fawning, conciliatory manner. “Koslovsky? What is he? No.”

“Finisher, I said.”

“Yes, finisher--finisher, that’s it. He does no work for me--only a little--a pair of pants now and then.”

“You knew that he didn’t have a license, didn’t you?”

“No, no. I did not. No license? Did he not have a license?”

“You’re supposed to know that. I’ve told you that before. You’ll have to answer at the office for this. I’ve tagged his goods. Don’t you receive them now. Do you hear?”

“Yes,” says the proprietor excitedly. “I would not receive them. He will get no more work from me. When did you do that?”

“Just this morning. Your goods will go up to headquarters.”

“So,” he replied weakly. “That is right. It is just so. Come over here.”

The inspector follows him to a desk in the corner.

“Could you not help me out of this?” he asks, using a queer Jewish accent. “I did not know this once. You are a nice man. Here is a present for you. It is funny I make this mistake.”

“No,” returns the inspector, shaking his head. “Keep your money. I can’t do anything. These goods are tagged. You must learn not to give out finishing to people without a license.”

“That is right,” he exclaims. “You are a nice man, anyhow. Keep the money.”

“Why should I keep the money? You’ll have to explain anyhow. I can’t do anything for you.”

“That is all right,” persists the other. “Keep it, anyhow. Don’t bother me in the future. There!”

“No, we can’t do that. Money won’t help you. Just observe the law--that’s all I want.”

“The law, the law,” repeats the other curiously. “That is right. I will observe him.”

Such is one story--almost the whole story. This employer, so nervous in his wrongdoings, so anxious to bribe, is but a little better off than those who work for him.

In other tenements and rear buildings are other shops and factories, but they all come under the same general description. Men, women and children are daily making coats, vests, knee-pants and trousers. There are side branches of overalls, cloaks, hats, caps, suspenders, jerseys and blouses. Some make dresses and waists, underwear and neckwear, waist bands, skirts, shirts and purses; still others, fur, or fur trimmings, feathers and artificial flowers, umbrellas, and even collars. It is all a great allied labor of needlework, needlework done by machine and finishing work done by hand. The hundred thousand that follow it are only those who are actually employed as supporters. All those who are supported--the infants, school children, aged parents, and physically disabled relatives--are left out. You may go throughout New York and Brooklyn, and wherever you find a neighborhood poor enough you will find these workers. They occupy the very worst of tumble-down dwellings. Shrewd Italians, and others called padrones, sometimes lease whole blocks from such men as William Waldorf Astor, and divide up each natural apartment into two or three. Then these cubbyholes are leased to the toilers, and the tenement crowding begins.

You will see by peculiar evidences that things have been pretty bad with these tenements in the past. For instance, between every front and back room you will find a small window, and between every back room and the hall, another. The construction of these was compelled by law, because the cutting up of a single apartment into two or three involved the sealing up of the connecting door and the shutting off of natural circulation. Hence the state decided that a window opening into the hall would be some improvement, anyhow, and so this window-cutting began. It has proved of no value, however. Nearly every such window is most certainly sealed up by the tenants themselves.

In regard to some other matters, this cold enforcement of the present law is, in most cases, a blessing, oppressive as it seems at times. Men should not crowd and stifle and die in chambers where seven occupy the natural space of one. Landlords should not compel them to, and poverty ought to be stopped from driving them. Unless the law says that the floor must be clean and the ceiling white, the occupants will never find time to make them so. Unless the beds are removed from the work-room and only one person allowed to work in one room, the struggling “sweater” will never have less than five or six suffering with him. Enforce such a law, and these workers, if they cannot work unless they comply with these conditions, will comply with them, and charge more for their labor, of course. Sweatshop manufacturers cannot get even these to work for nothing, and landlords cannot get tenants to rent their rooms unless they are clean enough for the law to allow them to work in them. Hence the burden falls in a small measure on the landlord, but not always.

The employer or boss of a little shop, who is so nervous in wrongdoing, so anxious to bribe, is but a helpless agent in the hands of a greater boss. He is no foul oppressor of his fellow man. The great clothing concerns in Broadway and elsewhere are his superiors. What they give, he pays, barring a small profit to himself. If these people are compelled by law to work less or under more expensive conditions, they must receive more or starve, and the great manufactories cannot let them actually starve. They come as near to it now as ever, but they will pay what is absolutely essential to keep them alive; hence we see the value of the law.

To grow and succeed here, though, is something very different. Working, as these people do, they have very little time for education. The great struggle is for bread, and unless the families are closely watched, children are constantly sent to work before they are twelve. I was present in one necktie factory once where five of its employees were ordered out for being without proof that they were fourteen years of age. I have personally seen shops, up to a dozen, inspected in one morning, and some struggling little underling ordered out from each.

“For why you come home?” is the puzzled inquiry of the parents at night.

“Da police maka me.”