"Husband ... has five years' sentence only just commenced. Wife is
a young woman, has a boy four years of age and very shortly expects
another little one. She has lived with her newly-married sister, a mere
girl, whose husband is now out of work. Wife has been sick lately, and
is very delicate. Rent due and liable to be dispossessed any time. Has
had nothing to eat to-day. Borrowed a little coffee from a neighbor. We
gave her two dollars to meet immediate need. Woman was very grateful,
said that two dollars was just as if she had fifty, she was so glad
of it. This is a worthy case. The woman was clean and neat, though
both she and the child have practically no clothing. Clothes should
be furnished immediately from our storeroom. These are really brave
people."
Entering my office one day I found a very young girl waiting to see me.
She was clad in a cotton gown, though it was bitter winter weather.
She seemed to be numbed, not only with the cold, but with the awful
lethargy of despair. On her lap lay what looked like an old blanket,
but as she talked, the blanket fell back and disclosed the naked body
of a tiny babe not three weeks old. It was blue with cold and cried in
the weak, gasping way that speaks of starvation. "Yes, I suppose it is
hungry," said the child mother, "but so am I; I have had nothing to eat
for twenty-four hours." The father was in prison and her people had
turned her out because they could not be burdened with the unwelcome
little one.
Another young mother came to see me, but she was of quite another
type. Not the helpless apathetic girl, whom sorrow robs of feeling,
but a woman young, strong and beautiful, but maddened by despair. As
she pressed her tiny babe to her heart she said, "What am I to do? We
must live. I cannot see my baby starve and yet I can't get work, for
nobody wants me with a babe at my breast. It is a hard, hard path in
this great city for the woman who wants to keep good and do right,
but it seems, for the one who goes wrong and does evil, that there is
plenty of good food, fine clothes, warmth and shelter. I don't want to
do that, I can't sell my soul, so I was on my way to the river, which
seemed the best place for baby and me."
In just such cases as these the friend in the hour of need can save the
misstep and point out the better, safer way to the weary, stumbling
feet. We have two Children's Homes, to which not only children, but
mothers can be sent, to tide them over until strong enough to work and
get a little home together.
Here is another case of a woman who made a brave struggle to keep
herself and her three children alive. She worked early and late and for
a long while kept her home together. Sickness came and then starvation
stared her in the face. A delicate, refined woman, she could not beg;
she was finally discovered almost too late, seemingly sick unto death.
Carefully and tenderly she was nursed back to health. One child died
and was buried. Thank God, not in Potter's Field, but where the mother
could see where her darling lay. As she recovered from the delirium of
sickness, she asked of what the baby died. "Tell her that it was sick,"
the doctor said, "its little heart stopped, but never let her know
that her child starved to death." And she never did. The father is home
by now, and works hard every day. The door is shut upon the sad past.
They are happy children and thankful parents.
We try to keep a fund to meet the needs of these families; a little
help in meeting the rent, providing suitable clothing for the children
who attend school, money for medicine or nourishing foods when there is
sickness, may just tide them over and prevent great misery, without in
any sense robbing them of their self-respect or making them dependent
upon charity.
These stories give you only a glimpse of the wide field. They could be
multiplied by the score, aye by the hundred, but even then the much
that lies beneath and behind the work, must be seen and felt to be
understood.
XI
SANTA CLAUS RESURRECTED
Christmas is a sad season in prison, because it is, perhaps of all
days, the one when thoughts most surely circle around home and when
pictures of past happy days shine out in vivid contrast to the lonely
narrow cell with its bare walls and heavy barred door. But if it is a
sad day for the men within the walls it is equally so for many of the
families who have to abandon the thought of any Christmas cheer to
brighten their poverty.
Naturally fathers in prison, whose little ones are still intensely
dear to them, grieve much over their inability to do anything towards
the cheering and gladdening of the children's Christmas. We have for
several years now made our Christmas greeting to the families of our
"boys" a special feature of our work. We have a big book in which a
list of our families is carefully recorded, every child's sex and age,
and, as far as possible, size, can be found therein. Besides this we
send to the New York and New Jersey prisons some weeks before the
holidays, and ask all men who know that their dear ones are in poverty,
to send us the home address that we may visit them, and in this way
compile a very complete list of those who need help. Naturally this
has proved a great cheer to the men themselves, and in many instances
has touched hearts that were hardened against any religious influence.
Kindness breaks down barriers that preachment or argument would only
cause to close the tighter.
A man who had been quite indifferent as to himself and full of ridicule
and abuse towards members of our prison league, was talking to some
fellow-prisoners about the dire poverty of his family, distressing
news of which had just reached him through the mail. A League member
overhearing, said, "Why don't you write and tell the Little Mother?"
"Much notice she would take of it," he answered. "Why, I am not a
member of the League--she don't know me--I would get no answer to my
letter." The V. P. L. boy persisted and at last the other said, "Well
I'll test it, but I don't expect anything." Sometime afterwards he
received a very happy letter from his wife telling of the big parcel
of things received, food, clothing and toys for the children. He was
deeply touched, and acknowledging this to the boy who had advised him,
he added, "Look here--it's time I made a man of myself. I've neglected
my family and made them suffer, and here are strangers who think
enough of them to help them. It's time I did the same." He joined the
League and became a most earnest member, getting ready to be the kind
of man who could on his return make a happy home, where in the past he
had only brought sorrow and misery.
Our preparations for Christmas have to begin several weeks beforehand.
Our idea has never been to prepare a big banquet to which the hungry
are bidden for one good meal. Many of our families are out of town
or scattered from one end to the other of this long island, and even
could we gather them all together, we want our help to be more lasting.
The Christmas tree decked for the children is a treat always enjoyed
by little ones, but even that sends them back to a very gloomy home
that seems all the colder with its fireless stove and empty cupboard,
after the glitter and brightness of the festivity. Our idea is to make
the home, poor though it may be, the centre of rejoicing. By visiting
beforehand and by our close knowledge of the circumstances, we can tell
just the needs of each family and can prepare accordingly. Our plan is
to give to each child one good suit of clothing,--to provide a supply
of groceries, a turkey and money sufficient for fuel and vegetables.
Some needed article of clothing for the mother is added and then
toys and candies for the children. We could hardly send the mothers
instructions to hang up the stockings for us to fill, for sometimes the
nuts, candy and oranges, would drop through these much-worn articles,
and often there would be no stockings to hang up. We therefore buy
stockings wholesale and fill them at our office. Not only do we attach
its mate to each filled stocking, but we add another pair so that every
child may have a change. I could not speak of the need of the Christmas
season without speaking also of the way our friends have helped us to
meet it. The girls of Vassar and Smith Colleges have year after year
dressed dolls and collected toys for us. Many of the children in happy
homes have done likewise, as also in some of the private schools. Boxes
containing these gifts commence arriving in the weeks before Christmas
and each new supply is received with acclamation by the little staff
of workers who know the joy that it will bring to the hearts of our
Christmasless little ones. The chapter of "King's Daughters and Sons
of Hartford, Connecticut"--organized three years ago to help my work,
is especially generous in its Christmas effort. Barrels of clothing
and toys can always be relied on to come from that source, and so much
personal work and careful thought is expended on the gifts that they
seem doubly valuable.
We raise a Christmas fund by newspaper appeal and from our regular
donors, and then follow our shopping trips armed with a list of the
ages and sizes of my many boys and girls and babies. I descend on
the stores to amaze the salesgirls with the size of my family, which
proves a mystery until they find out who I am. Trousers for ninety or
a hundred boys, dresses for an equal number of little girls--sweaters
by the score and baby outfits by the dozen, are soon chosen, and our
storeroom at headquarters becomes almost like a department store. We
spend about a hundred dollars for shoes of various sizes and always lay
in a large supply of toboggan caps, which are a special delight to the
boys.
The work of packing is not easy, where the special garments and toys
must always be assigned to needs and ages. When the parcels for distant
families are ready, they are shipped by express, but all within reach
are given out personally. Our Hope Hall wagon goes from home to home
the whole day before Christmas.
The poverty revealed is pitiful in the extreme and the gratitude of
mothers who receive this Christmas cheer is pathetic in its intensity.
To many of the little ones it has been explained that no Santa Claus
can come to their home because father is away, so the surprise is all
the greater. One family we heard of through the letter of the eldest
child, a ten year old boy, in which he told us that their "Santa Claus
was dead." He had a baby brother thirteen months old, another aged
six years and three little sisters. The child added, "Mother goes out
working but she can't get us anything." You can imagine the joy that
the Christmas gifts caused, when we resurrected Santa Claus in that top
floor tenement.
Last Christmas, in all the homes visited, not one could boast of
fire or fuel. It would have been mockery to give out the turkeys and
chickens without also giving the wherewithal to cook them.
In one home just under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge was found
a mother and her three little girls. They had nothing to eat in the
cupboard and no fire to drive the damp chill from the two rooms they
called home. Everything however was neat and clean. The woman was found
weak from sickness and starvation. She had just buried a two days' old
baby. When the gifts were displayed, she was too overcome to speak
but her tears showed how strong was her feeling. The children were
wild with delight but when the eldest commenced to tell something, the
mother tried to hush her; urged to go on, she said--"This morning we
had just three cents left--we went out and got tea with it and made it
good and strong for we could have nothing to eat." This is the mother's
letter received a day or two afterwards--
"I am very thankful to you for your kindness to my children and myself.
It was a big surprise to us, as it is three weeks since we had a good
substantial meal. I have given birth to a girl baby and buried her a
day after she was born. I was laid up two weeks and not able to work,
nor could I provide the necessary things for her burial, but the
children of the neighborhood made up a collection for it. You can see
what a hard struggle I have had to fight. If you could possibly get me
some sewing to do, so as to make my rent, it would be a relief to my
heart."
One Christmas, when I was able to do the work of distribution
personally, I entered a home on the fifth floor of a big tenement.
There was a small living room and kitchen combined and a windowless
bedroom not much more than a cupboard in size. A mother and five
children lived there. There was no fire in the stove. The cupboard door
was off its hinges and it certainly was not needed, for there was not
even a loaf of bread in the house. The only occupant of the room when I
entered, was a little girl of about eight years. She sat at the table
with her doll. It had neither legs nor arms and, having lost its wig,
there was a terrible looking cavity in its head. She was trying to
cover its far from handsome body with a piece of red flannel. I was
glad to know that a beautifully dressed doll would be hers when the
Christmas parcels were opened. The mother when visited a year before
had said to us in her broken English, "No happy Christmas till he come
home," pointing to the picture on the wall of the father who was in
prison. Is it a wonder that her face looked hopeless, and the tears
fell fast when we asked her how long that day would be in coming, and
she had to answer "Twenty years."
Late one Christmas eve, when the work of distribution was nearly over,
the officer who had charge of that duty for the upper part of the city,
climbed up the many gloomy stairs of a great tenement and knocked at
the rear door. All was dark and quiet, but when the knock was repeated
she heard a child-voice answer, "Wait a minute, please." In a few
moments the door was opened, and in the light stood a lovely child.
She was about six years old and clad in her little white night-dress,
with the halo effect of her golden curls, she looked like an angel. The
child seemed surprised to see a visitor but with much natural courtesy
she asked her in, placed a chair for her, and then with an "excuse
me, please" she flitted into the inner room to slip on her dress and
shoes, explaining also that she must "see to the children." The bedroom
revealed two other little ones--a boy of about four and a baby of
some sixteen months whom the little girl tucked in again very tenderly
after dressing her brother, with the instruction "You must keep covered
up, baby dear." Then she returned to talk to the visitor. Mother, it
seemed, was out trying to collect some money which was owing her for
work. Did she know about Santa Claus? Oh! yes, she knew all about him,
only mother said he could not call at their house this year. A look
around, however, showed that he was much needed. There was neither food
nor fuel in the house, but it was scrupulously clean and the children's
clothing, which was very threadbare and much patched, showed that the
mother's loving fingers had done all that could be done to keep them
neat and clean. Waxing confidential on the subject of Santa Claus, the
little girl added, "Johnny and I have been listening and we thought
we heard him whistling down the chimney. Didn't we, Johnny?" Johnny,
round-eyed and wide awake by now assented, and then the interest of
both children was riveted on the visitor by her startling announcement
that Santa Claus' wagon was down below in the street. On being asked
if she would like a doll, if such a treasure could be found in the
wonderful wagon, her little face lighted up with joy and she cried
impetuously, "Oh, yes!" But immediately checking herself she added,
"No thank you, ma'am, I think I am too old, but baby would like it,
I am sure." Poor tiny mother with the care of the children on her
shoulders, she had already learned to sacrifice, and to realize how
short a childhood is the lot of the children of the poor. The scene
can be imagined better than described, when parcel after parcel was
piled up on the table and the children, joined even by the baby, danced
around in an expectancy of delight. It was a happy Christmas after all,
and the father in his prison cell, heard the echo of it afterwards. He
has been home now some time and the little family is prosperous once
more. They have now no fear that Santa Claus will only "whistle down
the chimney" in passing as he whirls by to the more fortunate ones to
leave them hungry, cold and forgotten.
Our representative who has for two years taken the greatest interest in
this work writes as follows:
"This is the size of the baby's shoes. The mother had put the baby's
foot on a piece of paper marking around it with a pencil and forwarded
it to Mrs. Booth with the above explanation. The baby got the shoes.
There is no way however in which we can mark the size of the hearts
that went out in pity and compassion to bring a happy Christmas into
the homes of hundreds of poor mothers and little children where the
man of the house was gone. Often the little ones had said, 'Oh! mamma,
where is papa?' The mother with aching heart and tearful eyes gave an
evasive answer, for the father was in prison. Whatever may have been
the guilt of the man behind the bars, there can be no doubt about the
misery and wretchedness of these poor creatures, bereft of the bread
winner. The struggle to keep the gaunt wolf--poverty--from the door was
greatly enhanced last winter by the scarcity of coal. In nearly all
the houses I visited in New York City the fire was out. In some coal
was only a memory--driftwood, broken boxes and cinders from ash heaps
having been used. Some children doing nothing but search from morning
till night for anything that could be made to burn.
"In one family the old grandfather, too old to work, keeps the house, a
boy of thirteen works in a Broadway store and he is the sole support of
the family. Another brother of seven forages for fuel all day, and the
little sister of five goes to school.
"On the upper east side, among other things we gave a little girl not
only a doll but a beautiful little trunk full of clothes that had been
sent with it. Her brother of ten received a sled and they both got new
clothes. These two children simply went mad with joy. Running into a
back room, they stood and screamed aloud to vent their feelings and
the good woman, a hard worker, said with tears in her eyes, 'My man
will be home this time next year.' For five years she had fought the
wolf alone. This woman walked the streets of New York (being evicted
the very day her husband was sentenced) all night long, with her two
little children clinging to her skirts. Finally she procured a room--a
wash tub and an old stove, and she and her little ones lay upon the
bare floor every night for six weeks with nothing to cover them but the
mother's skirts.
"Christmas was made happy for another woman and her two children. She
works in a box factory and in good times earns three dollars and a
half a week. The poor are kind to each other. This woman said after we
had given her her gifts, 'I wish you could do something for the woman
in the cellar. She is worse off than I am.' In the cellar we found a
forlorn starving creature with a baby and a boy of seven. The husband
was paralyzed in one arm. He made only one dollar the week before. We
attended to the immediate wants of this family and since then have
sent clothing, for the woman and children were practically naked. The
help she received was so unexpected that she walked up and down the
miserable foul cellar pressing her baby to her breast, and saying over
and over again like one in a dream, 'I never expected it.'
"We turn into a side street and stop at a house--one of the kind
Dickens liked to describe. No one lived on the ground floor--at least
all was dark, and the front door without a lock banged upon its hinges.
Rails upon the staircase were partly gone and the cold wind rushed
through the hall. At the top of the stairs is a smoky oil lamp with
broken chimney. We knock at the first door to the left and a young girl
timidly opens it. Two little children, five and seven respectively,
peer out suspiciously from behind their sister, who is in this case
mother of the house. She is eighteen years old, and when we explain our
mission, the door swings wide open, for food, coal, and clothing mean a
happy Christmas. The little ones set up an impromptu dance and the girl
stepping back, shades her eyes with her hands. She is crying but it is
because she is glad. Each of the little ones has a doll by now and one
has crept off to the corner and is talking to hers in mysterious doll
language. They do not worry any more about the visitor because they are
absorbed in their treasure. Finally we get them interested in sundry
little dresses that the man from the wagon below is bringing, with a
turkey and other good things, until the little mother of the house
hardly knows what to say but she says as we hand her a good sized bill,
'Oh! thank you sir.' I can never tell you all that the 'thank you,
sir!' expressed. So with a merry Christmas we left them all overwhelmed
with joy.
"Near the top of a tenement on the west side I find a mother and
two little girls and a tiny baby. No fire--two bare rooms cold and
cheerless. They all have scared faces. One can see they expect good
from no one. After a little, we gain the confidence of the poor mother.
We bring out dresses, stockings, warm undergarments, things to eat,
chickens, and besides that, we leave some substantial help to warm the
room. Then the mother begins to cry softly and the little girls are so
wild with delight that, smiling through her tears, the mother tries to
quiet them saying, 'children, have you gone mad?' As I turned away from
home after home they sent back the message, 'May God bless Mrs. Booth
and may she never be hungry,' and wished for me the same good blessing.
Never be hungry! that is the key-note, the best thing that these poor
souls can wish to the more fortunate, is that you may never be hungry.
What a story there is in that sentence."
When this message from the chilly cheerless homes was brought to me by
our officer, strong man as he was, the tears were in his eyes, and to
my heart the words opened up a whole vista of struggle and suffering.
"May you never be hungry!" We should never think of giving such a wish
to our friends. Why? Because we have never known the horror of the
struggle with that gaunt wolf at the door. With these poor mothers he
is an ever present nightmare. It takes all their strength, all their
time and thought, to hold him at bay. Should they lose their work or
be laid aside through sickness, he will force an entrance and some of
them have seen that dark day more than once, when his cruel fangs have
been at the throats of their best beloved and he has crushed the little
ones to the ground beneath him. To them, that wish embraces a condition
of rest and satisfaction, of comfort and safety, almost beyond their
imaginings. So to those who are kind to them they wish the best they
can think of. May they never be hungry! Never know the dread and
anguish, the weakness and struggle, of starvation.
XII
PRISON REFORM
All punishment should tend to reform. The thinking world of to-day
recognizes this and the tendency in our country is so thoroughly one
of advance, that to keep to the old systems of prison government would
be impossible. Even during the past seven years, I have seen great
changes within our prisons and I want to speak in the strongest terms
of the earnest, faithful, humane work, accomplished by many of our
wardens whose administration I have watched. Prison reform is work that
cannot be accomplished by outside agencies. It is the specific duty
of those placed in charge of these institutions, and they alone can
fully see and understand the needs of the great problem, for they are
closely and practically in touch with it. Outside workers can of course
help very materially in educating public opinion, and in influencing
legislation, but so far as the work of improvement in our prison system
is concerned, that must be accomplished by those who are studying it,
not as students of criminology, anthropology or in theory only, but as
students of the prisoner and his requirements.