Part 11

On the next day I visited the Home again. It was meal time. They all sat around a big table, much like the one I had seen at the orphanage. In the orphanage are fatherless children, in the Homes childless fathers. They sat around the table and tried to chew what was on their plates. Their toothless mouths worked in vain. When the superintendent remarked to me that most of them have stomach ailments and I suggested that a dentist examine their teeth the lady could not stifle her laughter. She was herself a woman of sixty and her mouth was in perfect condition--it was the dentist's work of course.

After the meal was over I tried very hard to get some of the old men to talk. They had nothing to say--this was the answer I got from a few.

"Are you satisfied here?" I asked, to which one fine looking old fellow replied:

"It all depends what one expects, you know. In the Talmud is a story how a man, once very rich, was not satisfied with a supper that three poor men together would have been satisfied about."

I humoured the old fellow and got him to walk with me about the grounds. When out of hearing of the others he told me how the attendants beat every one of them for the slightest infraction of the rules of the house.

"Why don't you complain to the superintendent?" I suggested.

"The ones that do so shorten their lives."

"You mean?"

"Don't ask any further." A man understands closed lips.

In a rolling chair, at the further end of the garden, sat a paralysed old man.

"How are you feeling, Uncle?" I greeted him.

"Fine, fine," he answered. "I am all right, now."

"He is a lucky dog," remarked my companion, the old man of the Talmud story. "He is paralysed all over."

"Do you call that lucky?--man, it's the greatest misfortune."

"Not in a Home," he answered. "The paralysed are like the dead--they don't feel when they are hurt." Once his tongue was loosened the old man went on. "There is an attendant here, a brute. When he gets mad he runs around to find fault with some one, to hit him. Then we all get out of his way. This fellow here, he has a bad stomach. He would always be the scapegoat. My, how he would suffer. Only his legs got paralysed at first and he had to be turned over in his bed. When that drunkard would get through with him the poor fellow's body was black and blue from pinches and punches. Now he does not feel anything. He punches him and hits and pinches and gets mad to see that the fellow does not feel pain at all."

"Is that true?" I turned to the old man in the rolling chair.

"You bet it's true, and I have my revenge now, to see him get wild. 'Hullo, Harry! Why don't you pinch me a bit. Come on, Harry, have a pinch,' and he gets mad--like a savage."

I see you shake your head. Fiction! Fiction! Then read the letter sent by a young man and a young woman who worked at a "Home" in New York. The letter was printed in "Our Health" of January, 1913. The Institution did not even offer an excuse. Deny, it could not.

"The patients are mistreated, beaten, kicked, insulted," runs the letter. It has two signatures, the man's and the woman's. If this be not true, why did not the Montefiore Home sue the calumniators? But it is true. They keep quiet. They are afraid of revelations. Some old man or old woman might take his last days into his own hands and come out with the truth.

Another old man was punished by the attendant with two days' fast. He sat at the table but was forbidden to eat. The cause of the punishment was that the old man had soiled the tablecloth.

When visitors come the lawn is shown, the clean kitchen, the beautiful dining room, the spacious rooms. Nothing of the inhuman treatment to which the inmates are subject comes to light. The gross insults: "Beggar, schnorrer, pauper, liar," are not heard then.

One "Home" is under the same roof with an orphan house. Upstairs the children, downstairs the old people, as though it were a prophecy: "Here you start, there you finish."

The callousness of this shows the sentiment of the people supporting the institutions. An old woman, while peeling potatoes, remarked: "All they miss is a dressmaking shop between the floors and a cemetery in the yard and their whole life would stretch before them."

"BISMARCK"

Amongst the people in the Home were two chums of olden days. Moise Hertz and "Bismarck." They knew one another from childhood, were born in the same village in Russia, had gone to the same school (cheder) and were both, later on, with their wives and children, driven from home. Once across the border they drifted apart. Moise Hertz with his family went to Germany and "Bismarck" with his wife and children went to England. Both men were tailors. Moise Hertz's two sons returned to Russia during the revolution. One was hanged; the other is in Sachalin (Siberia). His wife died in New York.

"Bismarck's" son is in Denver, trying to cure himself of tuberculosis. His daughter is blind. His wife is in a Home for women.

The two men had not met for fifteen years, though they both lived in New York a good deal of this time. (When they told one another the stories of their lives they found out that they even worked for a time in the same shop, on different floors.) Then one day, as Moise Hertz filled his pipe he felt some one looking at him intently. The years are not so kind to the poor as to the rich, especially to poor Jews, but Moise Hertz's eyes were keen and the two old chums embraced and called one another by their first names. "Moise--Abe!" In their joy they even blessed the place where they met. Moise Hertz's loneliness was over. He had somebody to talk to of his younger days. They told one another their misfortunes. All hope for a better to-morrow was gone. They only had the past--a rich past, rich in suffering. Once a week Bassie, Bismarck's wife, would come to visit her husband. The trio would then sit together and figure out how their old friends' children were getting along. "He was born during the second cholera." "No, during the Ritual blood accusation of 'Thisza Esler.'" "No, that's impossible!" Bassie would explain. "My Baruch was three years old then and she married during the Pogrom in Kiev." They would quarrel on such subjects and their parting words would still contain an assurance from Bassie that she knew the right year of Leah's birth.

So passed a full year. The insults of the servants bothered them little. Then one morning Abe Schmenovitz (at that time he was not nicknamed Bismarck) complained to his friend that his arms pained him. Moise led his friend to the doctor's room. The man of science had a look and prescribed something. In spite of the medicine the old man's arms became paralysed. From that day on he was attended to by his chum. Moise Hertz would dress and wash him and at meal times he would feed the old cripple like a mother does her baby. Moise never ate before his friend was through with his meal. When the old fellow complained about his lost arms his chum consoled him:

"What's the difference how one does, whether with usable arms or not? I have arms for you--better tell me how you got on in London--a big town?" So he would make his friend forget the sorrows of his actual state by forcing him to recall other sufferings.

For two days Moise Hertz was too ill to attend to his friend. When mealtime arrived the cripple sat before his plate and looked at the food--there was no one to help him. He was very hungry. He dared not ask the attendant to help him, so he bent his head and got hold of a piece of meat with his mouth and while he tried to eat it fell out of his toothless mouth several times. He had to get it again--shook his head and reached further--bespattered himself, his face was coloured with the sauce from the plate. The other inmates howled and cursed. But the attendant called the whole servantdom to see the show, and they all laughed and laughed.

The institution had a dog called "Bismarck," and Abe Schmenovitz got this nickname from the chambermaid that day. It stuck to him to his last day. For several days the attendants forbade Moise Hertz to feed his friend. They wanted to see the show--a man eating like a dog. The old fellow forgot his real name in the course of time.

When he died the servant announced his death to the superintendent in the following way:

"Bismarck died."

"The dog?" The gentleman sprang from his chair.

"No, the man--sir."

TWENTY-ONE CENTS AND A QUARTER

An old couple who had once seen better days and whose only son died of caisson disease after working two months on the laying of the pillars which support the Williamsburg Bridge between New York City and Brooklyn, was supported by organised charity. Rent, coal and three dollars a week for food. For two years they lived on this scant pension, when all at once they were told to give up the flat; two rooms in a basement.

"You will be placed in Homes," was the explanation given. For fifty years these two old people lived together, shared joys and sorrows. They protested, cried, explained--all in vain. Their fate was decided in the office and after the usual test to recalcitrant paupers the two victims submitted. Bed, chairs and table were sold to the secondhand dealer for a few cents, then each of the two took a bundle in one hand, the picture of the dead son in another; one took the car for the north and the other for the east side of the city. The fifty years old bond was broken.

The cause of this act was the desire on the part of the charities to economise. The difference between keeping the old people in their own home and placing them in different Homes was eighty-five cents a month--twenty-one and one-quarter of a cent a week.

It did not take very long before the old man went on that journey whence no man has yet returned, and a few weeks after his wife followed him. There is no doubt that the separation had hastened their deaths. They had been together for fifty years, each growing accustomed to the other's habits and ways. Then, of a sudden, they were torn apart.

Speaking to an official of organised charity I drew his attention to the ridiculous economy realised through separating the old couple. The man looked at me for awhile and as an answer he said: "You are a baby."

A few months later he announced to me: "You know the old fellow--Sig--died, and his wife also."

I wanted to tell him that death was hastened by the criminal stupidity of organised charity, but he went on exulting in his own wisdom.

"Now I hope you will understand that the economy was greater than eighty-five cents a month."

What did he mean? Was it purposely done to hasten their death and save the pension? I can see no other meaning in his words. But have you ever seen in the papers an advertisement displayed in a prominent place, reading somewhat as follows:

"You are giving to charity; a hundred, a thousand or ten thousand dollars a year. Why not give it to organised charity and then send all the deserving to us? Not a cent is given before a thorough investigation is made by people trained to do the work and who know how. Contribute a regular sum yearly to organised charity. It will save you the annoyance of the outstretched hand and at the same time you will feel that you have done your duty towards the poor of the land."

All the homes I visited, more than twenty, here and abroad, impressed me with the terrible gloom that pervades their walls. It is the misery of a city housed under one roof. It is the pay of a life of toil, wearisome and ill-paid. The inhabitants know that the only issue is to the grave. They are not prisoners. They are free. But in their very freedom is the utter hopelessness of their existence.

"I forgot my name since I am here," an old woman told me. "You see nobody is _himself_ here. You are to be just like the other one. Not one of us to be different. I was an actress once. This here was the audience. Each of us had his place, his work. Now it's all alike."

Another man told me that he did not think the sun ever rose since he was in the institution. By the thousands and thousands, these, our fathers and grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers, whose blood flows in our veins, whose toil we still enjoy, the makers of houses and bridges and machines--they all rot in some prison--a Home--under the pretence of humanity and pity. We don't want them to beg on the street, is the general excuse. Why? At least they would be free. They would not depend on a man or a set of men. They would not be referred to by number and catalogued as cases and treated like dogs. In his "Decay of Beggars," Charles Lamb says:

"Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall of Lincoln's Inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful dog guide at their feet--whither are they fled? or into what corners, blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of the wholesome air and sun-warmth? immersed between four walls, in what withering poor-house do they endure the penalty of double darkness, where the chink of the dropped halfpenny no more consoles their forlorn bereavement, far from the sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring tread of the passenger? Where hang their useless staves? and who will farm their dogs? Have the overseers of St. L---- caused them to be shot? or were they tied up in sacks and dropped into the Thames, at the suggestion of B----, the mild rector of ----?

"These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months past a well-known figure, or part of the figure, of a man, who used to glide his comely upper half over the pavements of London, wheeling along with most ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood, a spectacle to natives, to foreigners and to children. He was of a robust make, with a florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his own level. The common cripple would despise his own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness and hearty heart of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him, for the accident which brought him low took place during the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long. He seemed earth-born, an Antaeus, and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He was a grand fragment; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature, which should have recruited his left legs and thighs, was not lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering and growling, as before an earthquake, and casting down my eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had started at his portentous appearance. He seemed to want but his just stature to have rent the offending quadruped in shivers. He was as the man-part of a centaur, from which the horse-half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan controversy. He moved on, as if he could have made shift with yet half of the body portion which was left him. The _os sublime_ was not wanting, and he threw out yet a jolly countenance upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no way impaired, because he is not content to exchange free air and exercise for the restraints of a poor-house, he is expiating his contumacy in one of those houses (ironically christened) of correction.

"Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nuisance, which called for legal interference to remove? or not rather a salutary and a touching object to the passers-by in a great city? Among her shoes, her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping curiosity (and what else but an accumulation of sights--endless sights--is a great city? or for what else is it desirable?) was there not room for one _Lusus_ (not _Naturae_, indeed, but _Accidentium_?) What if in forty-and-two-years' going about the man had scraped together enough to give a portion to his child (as the rumour ran) of a few hundreds--whom had he injured?--whom had he imposed upon? The contributors had enjoyed their sight for their pennies. What if after being exposed all day to the heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven--shuffling his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion--he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club of his fellow cripples over a dish of hot meat and vegetables, as the charge was gravely brought against him by a clergyman deposing before a House of Commons' Committee--was this, or was his truly paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is inconsistent, at least, with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which he has been slandered with--a reason that he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay, edifying way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy vagabond?

"There was a Yorick once whom it would not have shamed to have sat down at the cripples' feast, and to have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite too, for a companionable symbol. 'Age, thou hast lost thy breed.'

"Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. One was much talked of in the public papers some time since, and the usual charitable inferences deduced. A clerk in the bank was surprised with the announcement of a five-hundred-pound legacy left him by a person whose name he was a stranger to. It seems that in his daily morning walks from Peckham (or some village thereabouts) where he lived, to his office, it had been his practice for the last twenty years to drop his halfpenny duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus that sat begging alms by the wayside in the borough. The good old beggar recognised his daily benefactor by the voice only, and when he died left all the amassings of his alms (that had been half a century, perhaps, in the accumulating) to his old bank friend. Was this a story to purse up people's hearts and pennies against giving an alms to the blind? or not rather a beautiful moral of well-directed charity on one part, and noble gratitude upon the other?

"I sometimes wish I had been that bank clerk.

"I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature, blinking and looking up with his no eyes in the sun.

"Is it possible that I could have steeled my purse against him?

"Perhaps I had no small change.

"Reader, do not be frightened at the hard word imposition, imposture--give, and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have unawares (like this bank clerk) entertained angels.

"Shut not thy purse-strings against painted distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay to inquire whether the 'seven small children' in whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth to save a halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If he be not all that he pretendeth, give, and under a personate father of a family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit looks, and mumping tones, think them players. You pay your money to see a comedian feign these things, which, concerning these poor people, thou canst not certainly tell whether they are feigned or not."

The Superintendent, a man of about forty, of good appearance and strong physique, had just assumed his duties. Previously he had been manager of a department store. What recommended him to his new position was his reputation as a stern disciplinarian and strict economist. The first thing he did was to take an exact inventory of the property of the institution, then an approximation of what was necessary for the subsistence of each individual--so much flour, so much salt, so much meat--everything measured and weighed exactly. Instead of saying "so many people" the Superintendent would say "so many mouths." This done he proceeded to deliver to the cook the exact quantity necessary every day--the washerwoman received every week an exact quantity of soap--everything in order, strictly, soldierlike. The old people were compelled to get out and into bed at certain hours, compelled to report on certain days. Everything was very orderly, only the mortality of the inmates increased that year. The auditing committee saw no connection between the regularity and orderly keeping of accounts and the death of the old people. There was another item that did not interest them, namely, what was saved on food was spent on additional help. Not to attend the old people, oh, no! but to keep the lawn and garden in order. The Superintendent was praised. His keeping the things in such fine condition augmented the list of donors. The fund grew. It was invested in real estate, of course! To what other purpose could it be invested! Still another expense was not considered. But it was really a very small one. A few boards of white pine--a grave in Potter's field. A mouth is closed--a name is erased. The cook receives less flour, less sugar.

Ah, the poor, the poor! When they are young they are called "Hands." When they get old they are labelled "Mouths."

VISITING DAY

If you want to see the product of modern society all at once, have, so to say, a bird's-eye view of centralised misery, go to see a "Home" on visiting day. Look at the expectant faces of the inmates; the ones that have somebody "outside." Cripples, consumptives, idiots, diseased of all kinds pour in one after another. Some bring little bags of fruit and cakes. One interchange was especially interesting to me. In a greasy old newspaper a boy of twelve brought butts of cigarettes and cigars to his old grandfather. In exchange he received a boiled potato and a few lumps of sugar. The transaction over, the young one went his way and the old fellow retired to his room to dry up the remnants of other men's pleasures. This old fellow was held in great esteem by the others. Not every old grandfather could obtain the weed from his grandson. To an old man news was brought that his daughter had died. "When?" he asked quietly. "Yesterday." "Why did you not let me know immediately?" he inquired. "I was very anxious to know. As for us, the sooner we die the better it is."

Those who come to visit "their people" at the Homes depend partially or wholly on charity. No appearances are kept up. Information is given, advice received. What to say, how to behave, where to go. Each class has its wisdom. The paupers have theirs. If the supporters of organised charity could hear what is thought and said about them and their good deeds! Perhaps we would have a few homes less, but also the number of people needing homes would be reduced.

As long as you need "hands," you will produce "mouths."

EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES

In previous chapters I have spoken of the "Bureau," and how they procure "help" in time of trouble. The employment department of the charities procure help in time of peace, industrial peace, also. When a man or woman has applied for charity and the investigator judges the applicant fit for work, he is immediately sent upstairs to the Manager of the Bureau, who is telephonically notified about the "customer" and his peculiarities.