Part 3

Aimlessly I walked through the slums. I had never taken so much interest in every minute detail of the street as I did at that time. Every house, every window, every door meant something, said something. Tales of untold misery and despair and shame. I looked at the clothes of all the children and tried to guess, figure out, which one's mother was an applicant and which was not. Unconsciously I had divided the world into two classes--one that applies to charity and one that does not.

Then I made up my mind that Miss Alten was a relative, perhaps a sister, of Cram's, and I felt sorry that I had not asked her about it. In our discussion his name had been mentioned several times, and she had always affirmed that "he was the finest gentleman and the best investigator of the whole bunch."

How curious! Two such cruel beings in one charitable institution! I wondered.

My next case proved a very interesting one. It was in Monroe Street, on the fifth floor of a yard-house--Mrs. Miriam D.

As nobody around the neighbourhood wanted to tell me anything beyond the fact that Mrs. D. was a very honest women, I went up to the applicant at once. The mother was not at home: only her three children, a girl of twelve, another one of ten and a boy of seven years old were in the house. They sat, all three, around a table, and worked at their lessons. The kitchen was very clean and warm. The children were tidy, and everything was in order. But the poor girls were as pale as death. A single glance was enough to know that they were starved out. Only in their big, moist, Jewish eyes was there life. I asked the children where the mother was. "We don't know," was the response of all three, and they looked at one another as though to say, "I wish she were here."

From my talk with the children I learned that they were expecting a cousin by the name of Leb from the old country, so I decided to impersonate an agent of Ellis Island and get all the information I wanted in that way. I asked the girls how they were living; whether they had things to eat every day.

"Yep," the boy of seven said, with pride. "But not enough," added the oldest sister.

"From where does your mother get money to buy food?" I queried.

"From the Charities," the second girl explained, while the older sister kicked her in the shins as punishment for her frankness.

"Have you no relatives?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, we have," all three again answered.

"Who are they?"

"Louis Goldman, Uncle Louis," she explained.

"What is your uncle?"

"A shoemaker."

"And who else?"

"Uncle Marcus."

"And what is he?"

"A bum," the little boy put in. "A bum, that's what he is." I had a hard time to get him out of his sister's hands. They were still trying to kick him when the mother came in.

Mrs. D. remained at the door in surprise, evidently wondering who I was.

"What do you want?" she questioned.

I was taken by surprise, but I immediately remembered the children's talk about a cousin from the old country and I said that I was an agent from Ellis Island.

"Why!" the woman cried out, in ecstasy, "is he here? Oh! children your cousin is here!" And she kissed them all in an outburst of happiness. "Is he here? Tell me."

"Who is he?" I asked.

"Oh, I'll go immediately and take him out. It's my cousin, Leb Herman Rosen, my own cousin."

"All right," I said. "You'll have to give me some information first."

"What information? It's my real cousin."

She sat down ready to answer my questions. I took out my note book and put the following questions:

"How long are you in America?"

"Eight years."

"How many children have you?"

"Three."

"How long is it since your husband died?"

"Four years."

"Now, if you want to take your cousin in your house you must prove that you'll be able to support him until he gets work, and show enough money to assure the United States that he will not become a public charge. How do you make a living? How much are you earning a week?"

"I--I--I," she stammered, "I make a living."

"How?" I insisted.

"I sell whisky, tea, coffee, powder, toothpaste."

"Well, how much do you make a week?"

"Well, well, I make a living."

"But to keep a cousin you must make more than a living--more than you need."

"I make more," she said. "I--do make more."

As I knew that she was receiving charity I did not believe her and told her she would have to prove that she made more than she needed. She walked up to a chiffonier, searched a drawer, and to my great astonishment brought forth a bank book which showed that she had one hundred and thirty-five dollars accumulated in the last two years.

"Will that prove that I earn more than I spend?" she said triumphantly.

I looked at her in astonishment. A mother who lets her children starve to put money in the bank! What wild animal would neglect its offspring to such an extent! I called her into the next room and told her what I thought of her and who I was. She cried bitterly under my lashing, and then told me the following story:

"I should not tell you this, but as you think that I am an unnatural mother I must explain myself. My husband died four years ago. He was a cloak operator and earned good money when I married him. After the second child was born his wages did not suffice to keep us as well as he wished. It was a very busy season. He worked overtime every night, until one and two o'clock in the morning. When the season ended we had three hundred dollars in the bank. But soon he got sick. Six months he lay sick at home. When all the money was gone we had to send him to the hospital. A month later he died, and two months after his death I gave birth to the third child. While I lay in bed there was nobody to take care of the children and there was no bread for them either. A neighbour wrote to the charities and told them all about us, and our plight. Two days passed. A woman came, looked around, questioned me and went away. They sent a nurse and money to feed the children. When I was out of bed they called me to the office and informed me that they had decided to give me two dollars a week and pay my rent. But, I ask you, could I live on two dollars a week? I had to do something. I went out washing and scrubbing floors. I got sick. The charities got to know that I worked. They immediately informed me that if I worked they would not give me anything. What could I do? Live on the two dollars? That was an impossibility. Work? I did not earn enough to get along without their support. Little by little I began to sell tea and coffee in the hours when the children were in school. But the investigator was informed by the grocer and butcher that I spent more than two dollars a week. Again I was called to the office. They questioned me, tortured me, accused me of being a bad woman. Where did I get the money? In despair I lied to them. Told them that the grocer and butcher had given wrong information, that they did not know; they had no proof and had to give me the pension.

"Still I could not get along on their money. My children were hungry. I was hungry. I went out again and sold tea and coffee and whisky, and under my coat I would bring an additional piece of meat and bread. Soon the neighbours knew that we had meat every day and some of them told the investigator. By this time she had made it a habit to spy on my every move. She reported me to the office. Again I was called and questioned and again I lied and cried. I could not get along on their two dollars a week and could not get along on my work alone. But when I got home I was wiser, and since then, instead of buying bread and meat, I have to put the money in the bank. This one hundred and thirty-five dollars is the meat and bread of my children, their health and their life. Yes, I am a bad mother. I am a bad mother," and wept anew.

The next day I went to the office and gave a report of my work. The case of Miriam D. I reported more extensively than the others, insisting that the children were starved while the woman had one hundred and thirty-five dollars in the bank, accumulated not from surplus but from what she was forced to deprive her children of. Mr. Lawson immediately called in the Manager and showed him my report. They congratulated me on my ability and I felt that they would tell their investigators that they must not persecute the woman and the orphans by spying. The Manager pronounced me a second Sherlock Holmes and announced that Mrs. D.'s pension would be cut off.

I was dumbfounded. So this was the result of my work! To take the bread out of the mouths of the three orphans. I accused myself of stupidity and could look no one straight in the face. Through treachery I learned the truth, and instead of using it for her good I had used it to help the investigators be more cruel, more questioning than before. What could the woman do? Had she not told me that she could not live on what she earned? Was the one hundred and thirty-five dollars enough for her to support her children? And I imagined them all starved and sick, dying in hospitals. All through my fault. I should have known that they would not reform their investigating system because of my report. How I hated myself. How I hated the whole world. At night when I went home I was ashamed to kiss my children, for I had committed a crime. As I thought of the inscriptions on the doors: "For the poor of the land shall never cease;" "Let thy hand give freely to the needy," etc., I remembered Dante's "Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate."

In disgust and despair I walked the streets the next day without being able to do anything. Like a criminal who returns to the scene of his crime I walked around the house. I felt a strong call to go in and beg forgiveness for her undoing. I have since learned that it has not done any harm. On the contrary, deserted by the charities the woman redoubled her energies. The cousin she was waiting for arrived a few days later, bringing some money with him. They bought a grocery store and she is earning her living. But at that moment I thought myself guilty of the greatest crime. I made many decisions, but stuck to the last, namely, to take notes of all the evil that organised charity was doing and at the first opportunity give them out for the benefit of the world.

I understood that the welfare of the poor did not concern the men at the head of the charity organisation; that it has become a business for them. A business they were managing, just as others manage factories. Their concern was to reduce the cost, to economise, just as the manufacturers try to produce the greatest amount of product with the smallest amount of outlay. And if hunger, starvation, sickness was the by-product, well, so much the worse for the poor.

WATCH THEIR MAIL

One morning I received the following order:

"Investigate Sokol, Monroe Street, No. ----. Night visit preferable."

When I asked the Manager what he meant by night visit he told me between ten and eleven o'clock. Accordingly, at ten P. M. I knocked at the door of the above named family. In the few minutes that elapsed between the knocking and the opening of the door I heard a man groaning--as men groan under excruciating pain.

The woman, Mrs. Sokol, opened the door for me, and inquired who I was. I was instructed by the office not to tell them my identity under any circumstances. So I said I was from the Board of Health--that neighbours had claimed that they could not sleep on account of the man's groans, and I told Mrs. Sokol that we would have to see him and send him to a hospital. I entered the apartment. There were two rooms. In one room was the bed with the sick man in it. The other room was the kitchen, dining and reception room. A cold stove, a table, four chairs, and on one side two more folding beds. This was the furniture.

The man kept groaning. His wife whispered to him to keep still, but his pains were probably so great that he could not understand what she said. I lit the gas and approached the bed. A strong odour of putrefaction compelled me to withdraw, and the next moment the wife told me that he had a cancer, that he had been operated upon several times without success and that he now suffered the most excruciating pains; that the doctor came only once in two days, only to have a look--"to see if he is already dead," as she put it.

"Why don't you send him to the Skin and Cancer Hospital?" I asked.

"We are only two years in this country," was the woman's reply, "and they will send us back to Russia."

"And the Jewish hospital?" I suggested.

"He has been there twice--they operated on him."

"Well, well," I urged, "why does he not stay there?"

The man groaned, the woman cried, some sick child in the neighbourhood woke with the noise and mixed his sickly crying with theirs and the moaning of the wind outside. It was a pitiful scene. I started my interrogation.

The man was a musician, a fiddler. He was not a member of the Union. He had been in America two years, and sick from the first moment he had come. "And how do you get along?" I asked. "From where do you get money for bread?" Again the woman cried. Soon the man fell asleep. I heard his heavy breathing and felt the odour of putrefaction emanating from his body. Pitilessly I insisted on getting an answer to my question: "From what do you live?"

"There was not a piece of bread in the house to-day," was the answer.

"Yes, but where did you get yesterday's bread?"

"We had no coals for the last four days."

"But from where did you get it before that?" I argued.

"From--from--from the charity," the woman broke down hysterically.

The two folding beds in the kitchen attracted my attention and I asked her whether she had any boarders. This was the touchstone of her suffering. We drew our chairs away as far as possible from the sick bed and there she told me.

"These are not boarders' beds. They are the beds of my two daughters, Amy eighteen years old and Leah twenty--two daughters have I, like two flowers. Envied by the whole world. I was the proudest mother. Well, I'll tell you the whole story.

"Two years ago we, my husband, myself and the two daughters, arrived here from Warsaw. My husband was a healthy, strong man. My daughters were dressmakers. We had a little money. We rented these same two rooms and a few days afterward, through the influence of friends, both children found work at their trade. Only my husband remained idle. They did not want to take him into the Union. A few weeks he walked around without work, then he went to a leather finding factory where he had to cut out pieces of leather. It was piecework. They worked in a cellar, sixteen or eighteen hours a day. At the end of the week he had two dollars. It was very hard on him. He had never done physical work, still he returned there the next week, hoping that he would do better, having a week's experience. He went away at five in the morning and returned at eleven at night, yet he could not make more than forty cents a day.

"His daughters made the first week six dollars each, working nine hours a day, and he, the father, working twice as hard and twice as many hours made two dollars a week. He took sick. We called the doctor. He gave a potion and left. My husband got worse and worse every day. We went to a hospital. There it was found that he had cancer, and must be operated on. But just as we were ready to go and do it we found out that there is a law that we had no right to use a public hospital before we have been here five years. We applied to the Jewish hospital. My husband was operated upon.

"My daughters worked. On account of the illness of their father they had no opportunity to buy clothes, American clothes. They were still in their greenhorn dresses, and the whole shop made fun of them. They simply had to buy clothes. The money we brought here was long since gone, so when their father was brought home after the first operation there wasn't a penny in the house. The visiting doctor gave me a letter to the charities and told me that they would help me. I went there. I don't want to tell you through what I went at their hands. Enough to say that when I came home I felt as though I had committed the greatest sin. I felt guilty towards myself. I felt like a criminal awaiting his day of judgment.

"Finally the investigator, a young lady, came. She saw my daughters. They were neatly dressed, and as young girls generally are, they thought of their own life, were gay and healthy. The investigator started to examine them and after every answer she tried to confuse them and prove that they lied. She stayed a half hour. When she left the poor children were as pale as death--a terrible gloom had settled upon them--as though death itself had visited our shelter.

"From then on we had no repose. They helped us with a few dollars, but every other day some one else inquired about us--at the neighbours--at the grocer--butcher. They visited us at all hours of the day and night. Sometimes when we had visitors the investigator would question them, until all our friends have left us. They followed the poor children to their work and went to take information from the employer. On one occasion, when the girls struck together with the other workers of the shop the boss cried out to my girls: 'I'll show you! When the charity will come I'll give such information that you wouldn't get a cent.' This was too much for the poor children. They came home, packed their belongings--and--" Here the poor woman broke out in hysterical weeping, approaching the two empty beds, and cried: "My house is empty. Cursed be the hour when I applied to charity. I should have gone out begging in the street."

And as I slipped out of the house the cry of the woman pursued me.

"Cursed--Cursed be the hour that I applied to charity!"

I reported the next day the situation of the family and urged immediate relief. The Manager called me into his sanctum and told me that my information was not complete, since I had not learned where the daughters were. "I am sure," he said, "that she knows where they are. You must get it out of her."

"All right," I said, "but in the meantime send them relief. There is no coal, no bread."

"Are you sure?" he asked. I assured him of the fact.

"Then it's all right," and he rubbed his hands with great satisfaction. "It's all right," he repeated. "We'll break her stubbornness, all right. We'll get their address now. So they have no bread, eh?"

Cries from the waiting room came to my ears, as though a chorus of those unfortunate beings would blaspheme all together: "Cursed be the hour when we applied to charity--cursed--cursed--cursed."

We were interrupted by some one else coming in on some business.

I felt my head swimming and I looked longingly outside through the large window over the Manager's desk. A little bird flew around the sill, and hungry, she tried to pick the putty from around the pane. Mr. Rogers probably followed my wandering gaze for he was soon standing near me and having also remarked the little bird he exclaimed: "Poor little thing, is it not pitiful? Hungry and cold!" So saying he opened the window and invited the bird to enter. Yet the bird preferred to remain outside.

Mr. Lawson was called in and a conference took place as to how to force Mrs. Sokol to give the address of her children.

"But do you suppose that she has sold her children for immoral purposes that you are so anxious to learn their whereabouts?"

"No, we don't suppose _that_," Mr. Rogers answered, "but when we give them money we want to know everything, you understand, everything. Here she has two daughters and she keeps their address a secret! Whatever we have done was of no avail. We must curb her. Isn't that so, Mr. Lawson? We must show her that she cannot keep secrets from us. What would you suggest, Mr. Baer?"

I had nothing to say.

Mr. Lawson twisted his little blond moustache awhile, then he suddenly exclaimed joyfully, as Archimedes cried, "Eureka" when he discovered the law of specific gravity: "Watch their mail!"

"They certainly get mail from the girls. Let Mr. Baer watch their mail and get one of their letters, and that will solve the whole thing."

The manager pronounced it a splendid idea and I was instructed accordingly. I went up to see Mr. Sokol a few times and reported that they got no mail. One morning, while visiting them, I found that the man had died over night. Among the mourners were two beautiful, pale girls. The daughters of the old couple.

I reported the occurrence at the office. Mr. Lawson called me to his room.

"So he died? He died?" he repeated. "We will send her to the old people's asylum. That will save rent. But you saw the girls, did you?"

"Yes."

"What's their address? Did you find out?"

"I could not ask their address in such a moment," I retorted.

"It's a mistake, an awful mistake, Mr. Baer," he censured me. "It was the best occasion. You should have taken advantage of the moment. Please return to the house and get their address," he instructed, as he led me to the door.

From the hall I ran out into the street. I wanted fresh air--air and space. And this same Mr. Lawson almost cried when his wife's pet dog died. And Mr. Rogers pitied the poor little bird that picked the putty off the sill. And at charity conventions, when he had to appeal for funds, he almost shed tears about "our unfortunate brothers and sisters." Now they advise, when the father lay dead on the floor: "It was the best occasion. You should have taken advantage of the moment." Would a criminal be treated in this way during the third degree?

The woman died a month after, in a hospital. Hunger and privation of all sorts had undermined her strength. _Charity had killed them both._

THE ROLLER SKATES

"Investigate Mrs. B., 124th Street, No. --. Investigator reports woman never home. Questions morality. Urgent. W. L."

I found this slip on my desk one fine morning. An hour after I was at the given address. The door was locked. No one was at home. Inquiry at the neighbours informed me that I would have to wait until three o'clock when the children came from school.

"And Mrs. B.? When does she come?" I asked.

"When the children come from school," I was answered.

Consequently I had to remain in the neighbourhood. New York's climate is very fit for a cosmopolitan city. Just as the men of the South dwell in the neighbourhood of the Northern, the Italian near the Norwegian and the Spaniard in the same building with the Russian, so does the winter live near the summer, the spring next to the autumn. One day a snowstorm, the next day it rains. You put on the heaviest clothes one morning and come home with your waistcoat on your arm, so to speak. Here in the middle of winter, the second half of January, I had gone out with a heavy winter coat and at one o'clock it looked more like the end of May than winter. I walked up to Central Park to spend my time until 3 P. M. The squirrels had left their hiding places and were dancing to and fro to replenish their reserve store of food. The little birds flew and sang merrily. The children of the well to do, watched by the ever-following servants, played with the caged prairie dogs, the goats and other animals of the Park Zoo. Around the monkey cage the people of the suburbs and more distant towns and villages were watching and enjoying the antics of our gay ancestors. The lions roared, the tiger groaned, and that money-saving elephant rang the bell every time some one put a cent in his big snout. This was the only thing he had learned from men--save money. I don't know why, but one forgets himself so easily in the neighbourhood of children, farmers and wild animals. I had not noticed how time passed and stood in the Zoo more than the required time. I had completely forgotten my mission. But some one inquired the time from the keeper. I heard his answer and ran.

In 124th Street again.