LEADERS OF THE HERD
It was a cold, bleak morning during the November of 1920 that my work as
inspector of dog licenses took me to an old tenement-house on a cross
street between Avenue A and Exterior Street. On learning that the
janitor lived two flights up, back, east, I climbed the stairs.
The janitor’s eight-year-old daughter was in charge. She was a polite
little girl and reminded me of a plant which, having struggled up in
semidarkness, had gone to seed too early. She thought her mother would
be back soon, she told me, and held the door open for me to enter. Then
placing a chair near the cold kitchen-stove, she invited me to sit down.
On my eyes becoming accustomed to the duskiness I saw that there was
something on the bed in a little closet of a room that opened into the
kitchen over which the little girl was hovering. The child’s anxiety was
so evidently urgent that I instinctively left my seat and hastened to
her assistance.
The something on the bed was a fragile little scrap of humanity about a
year and a half old. I am not a trained nurse, but even I could tell
that the spark of life in that frail body was fading rapidly away.
Questioning the little girl I learned that she really did not know where
her mother was. She had been left to mind the baby, and that was all she
knew.
The filthy conditions of the flat of three small rooms would have made
me know without seeing the little girl that its occupants were either
Irish or Italians. A glance at the child assured me that they were
Irish. Knowing the besetting sin of that race, I jumped to the
conclusion that the mother had gone out and got drunk.
There was no fire in the stove and no coal in the rusty tin bucket
beside it. The little girl said neither she nor the baby had had any
breakfast. It was so evident that the baby was dying, that I had to do
something. I rushed to the door of the front flat on the same floor.
“Jesus!” cried the Italian woman who answered my knock, as soon as I
explained my errand. “Ain’t she got back yet?”
Yes, the janitor had stopped at her door on her way out, more than an
hour ago. She had said her baby was better, more quiet, had not fretted
so much during the later part of the night. She was on her way to the
grocery to get a bucket of milk for the baby and a little something for
her own and her daughter’s breakfast.
However untidy an Italian woman might be I always found a heart in her
bosom, and that her hands were ready to help. This one, while talking,
jerked up a milk-pail and held it bottom upward over a cup. Not a drop.
How greedy her children were! If only they had left a few swallows for
her to heat and give the janitor’s baby. Then scooping up a panful of
coals she hurried after me and into the janitor’s flat.
Turning the pan of coals over to the little girl, she followed me to the
bedside. Crooning half under her breath she bent over the still little
figure. At first it seemed almost gone, its breathing was so faint.
Throwing at me a swift glance of consternation, the woman turned on the
little girl. She must get on her coat—the poor, half-frozen little mite
was wearing the only coat she possessed—and run down to the grocery.
While talking she snatched the pan of coals from the child’s hands and
proceeded to gouge down into one of her stockings.
As the Italian woman drew a crumpled bill from her stocking the door of
the flat opened, and in stepped the janitor. Her face was wreathed in
smiles, and both hands concealed by the ends of her shawl. The Italian
woman, extending her hand, demanded the milk.
The janitor, throwing aside her shawl, displayed a short fat candle. She
had been to church, she explained complacently, had burned a candle and
prayed to Saint Somebody—I did not write the name of the saint to whom
she prayed in my diary—for her baby. Her baby would get well. Oh, yes,
it would surely get well, for she had spent the balance of her money for
another candle.
Then without so much as a glance at the dying child, she hurried into
her front room, and having lit the candle, placed it before the gaily
colored picture of another saint. While she was doing this the last
breath fluttered away from her baby.
When the Italian woman told her, convinced her that the baby was dead,
such shrieks! Shriek after shriek. She alarmed the entire house, and
persons passing in the street stopped to ask the reason.
I know negroes by the hundreds. I have known and lived among them all my
life. Of them all, hundreds, there was only one who would have done such
a thing, pinned her faith to a burning candle. That one was an old, old
negress. She used to try to hoodoo persons.
Once, about twenty years ago, under the steps of the ironing-room at
home, we, my brother and I and the negro children about the yard, found
a conjure-bag of her making. It contained the claw of a ground-mole, a
few hairs, said to be off a dog’s tail, two cow-peas, and a scrap of
bacon rind.
How the negroes laughed at that old woman! Young and middle-aged they
jeered her. They asked her what she thought she was going to do by such
foolishness. Who did she think was afraid of her conjure-bag? When she
mumbled angrily back at them they only laughed the louder.
Odd how one will change. When I first went to work in the slums nothing
impressed me so favorably as the education of Irish children. I used to
see them on the streets, in the tenements, the little girls in white,
with long white veils and flowers, and the little boys with a bow of
bright ribbon on one arm, and a gay-colored picture-card. The faces of
all of them so happy, so uplifted.
I do not recall a parade during which one or more of these newly
confirmed children did not come to me for my congratulations. As a
member of the Woman’s Police Reserve I acted as usher for all the
parades that took place on Saturday and on holidays. Besides directing a
boy scout in the seating of persons, it was my duty to keep children
from crowding into the street and running wild over the bleachers.
It was while doing this that little boys and girls used to take occasion
to show me their cards—each one pointing out his or her name among those
of the class printed on the inside. Some of them would read aloud their
verses to me. All of them seemed supremely happy, so sure that in
becoming connected with their church they had done something of which
they had every right to feel proud. And I still fully agree with them in
that attitude.
It so impressed me at the time that I wrote Doctor Percy Stickney Grant,
rector of the Church of the Ascension of New York City, asking why
Protestant children were not brought up in the same way?—why Protestant
children were not taught to feel at home in their church building?—why
they were never on such charmingly friendly terms with their minister as
Roman Catholic children were with their priest?
I selected Doctor Grant because he seemed to me to be the only
Protestant minister in the city of New York who was even trying to
understand conditions among the poor of the Greater City, to learn their
point of view. I am not one of his parishioners. I do not even belong to
the same denomination.
In his reply he gave me a reason, and I judge that he did not wholly
agree with me as to the desirability of Protestant children being so
trained. Now, after seeing to what this early training leads in the
slums, while I do not think it as desirable as I once did, I still feel
that all evangelical churches miss their greatest opportunity when they
neglect children.
Among the many snarls in which I found myself was a memorable one
brought about by my ignorance. While on the staff of the Bellevue social
service I had occasion to call several times on the same family,
watching the convalescence of three children, all of whom had had
pneumonia following an attack of influenza.
The mother, an intelligent and neat Irishwoman, complained that she
could not keep the medicine prescribed for one of these children. The
youngest member of her family, a two-year-old baby, persisted in
drinking it. She had scolded and punished the baby, but in spite of all
she could do it had drained three bottles of the medicine. As it was a
question of keeping it out of the reach of the baby and yet having it
where the mother might easily lay her hands on it, I glanced around her
two bare rooms.
“Here you are!” I exclaimed joyfully, and reaching a little above my
head I removed a little plaster figure from a little shelf in the
corner. “This is out of your baby’s reach, and your saint can stand over
here.” So saying I stood the figure on a corner of a lower shelf.
That was a terrible mistake. The woman snatched the little figure and
placed it back on the high shelf. No saint would ever forgive a person
who moved it from a higher to a lower shrine—I think she said shrine.
Her agitation was genuine.
I left her on her knees, telling her beads before that little
unbeautiful figure of plaster. She was explaining to the saint that it
was I, not she, who had committed the crime. She implored the saint not
to curse her or her children for my deed. I’m not at all sure she didn’t
call me a devil. Another woman did, all because of a scapular.
I had learned about wearing scapulars, for a cousin of my mother married
a descendant of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, and I grew up with their
children. Of course they all wore scapulars, so beautifully embroidered
that I used to advise them to wear them outside their clothes. And while
this growing up together was going on I went to school with Clarence
Horton.
Clarence was a son of our nearest neighbor, and at school he was famous
for two reasons—he wore a little bag of assafœtida around his neck
and he ate goose-eggs, hard-boiled goose-eggs. Because of the goose-eggs
nobody cared to trade lunch with Clarence, and because of the
assafœtida nobody would sit with him. However we might be enjoying
ourselves, when Clarence joined us we went elsewhere.
During my service as a social worker I called at the flat of a woman who
had been a Bellevue patient. Her baby was sick and she had not had an
opportunity to go out and get the medicine ordered by the doctor,
because he had cautioned her against taking the baby out and letting it
take more cold. I offered to hold the baby while she ran to the corner
drug-store and got the medicine.
The child was feverish and very fretful. Soon after taking it on my lap
I noticed that it was tugging at a dirty string around its neck. To the
string I found attached what I took to be a dirty little bag. Instantly
there flashed into my mind memories of Clarence and his bag of
assafœtida. Snapping the string I dropped the whole arrangement into
the coal-bucket.
When the mother returned I explained to her that tying disinfectants
around a baby’s neck really did not do any good. And I told her that I
had taken it off the baby.
The woman was wild with terror. She snatched the baby from me; said I
was a devil and her baby would surely die unless she could remove my
“spell.” Grabbling in the coal-bucket she fished out the scapular, and
in spite of all I could say or do out she went—taking the baby to a
church.
That broke me all up. Respect for the faith of others had been hammered
into me from my infancy up. We were never allowed to go to a negro
camp-meeting, because my father feared that we might laugh or do
something, even innocently, that would hurt the feelings of the
worshippers.
Besides, I was brought up to respect Roman Catholics just as I was all
other denominations. My father was graduated from Georgetown University
before he entered William and Mary. And my brother nearest my own age
went to a Catholic school before entering college.
No one can truthfully accuse me of animus against the Catholic Church or
against the Irish. Besides my Carroll cousins, some of the best friends
I ever had were Catholics and natives of Ireland. It was a United States
senator, the owner and publisher of a notable newspaper, who gave me my
“start” as a writer. He was a native of Ireland and a Catholic. He was
one of the most intelligent persons I have ever known, and the kindliest
of gentlemen.
It was because I had known these splendid persons, natives of Ireland,
and had been brought up with such a profound respect for the Catholic
Church that my awakening in the slums was so tardy and so violent.
To-day the best explanation that I have been able to reason out is that
the great organization that did so much to Christianize and civilize the
human race has become like Lot’s wife—pillar of salt looking eternally
backward, salt that has lost its savor.
As I saw the Irish Catholic in the slums of New York there was no truth
in them. They would tell me they had no dog with the animal in plain
sight, usually lying under the stove. When I called their attention to
it they would swear by some few of their multitude of saints that it had
strayed in from the streets, and in the goodness of their hearts they
had fed it and allowed it to stay and rest. When I proved by the
janitor, other tenants in the house, and by the dog itself that they
were lying, they were not embarrassed, not at all.
There was no use getting them to promise to come and take out a license.
I soon learned that there was but one way, making them understand that
unless that license was taken out within a stated time I would take them
to court. Looking over my records I find that Spaniards, Italians,
French, Bohemians, and even Polacks to whom I gave three months’ time
kept their word. At the time of my call the worker of the family was on
a strike, had lost his job, or had sickness or some other misfortune
that consumed his earnings. In such cases I asked them to name the date
before which they could get their dog a license. There is not a
delinquent among the races I have named on my books.
When I first started in I treated the Irish the same way, but they soon
taught me that it was casting pearls before swine. All the rudeness, the
only rudeness I met in tenements was from persons who boasted of being
either Irish or Germans. The Germans soon got a change of heart. The
last half of my four years in the tenements the French themselves were
not more courteous. Rude or courteous, a German is always neat, in his
home as well as in his person. It seems to me the longer I worked in the
slums the more I discovered in the Irish to laugh at or deplore.
I write of them as Irish because they were continually assuring me: “I’m
Irish. My father and mother were born in this country, and I was born
here. But I’m Irish, me and my children, too.”
The little music-teacher who lived in the room under mine in Miss
O’Brien’s Greenwich Village rooming-house explained to me the reason why
the Irish have a contempt for Italians. I told her of having stopped in
the Italian church on East Twelfth Street and having seen a Liberty-bond
button attached to the garments of the Virgin and the Child.
“Did it mean that some worshipper had made an offering of two Liberty
bonds?” I asked, and the idea seemed to me very beautiful—combining
devotion and patriotism.
The little music-teacher tossed her head scornfully.
“We Irish Catholics have nothing to do with Italians,” she informed me.
“See how they allow the Pope to be treated. You wait and see how he’ll
be treated when he comes to live in Ireland.”
“Do you think this Pope will do that?” I inquired, for the thought was
not only new to me, but it seemed as improbable as moving St. Peter’s
itself.
“It will be done within five years, maybe within two,” she asserted
positively.
Though that little woman was the third generation born in the United
States, she took it as an insult to be referred to as an American. And
the threats she used to breathe against the Democratic Party. Until I
met her I had fancied that all my fellow citizens with Irish blood in
their veins were devoted Democrats. She strangled that belief.
She was something of a character, that young woman. She possessed
considerable musical talent and the promise of a good voice. Her family,
with much self-denial, had managed to send her to Rome in the hope of
her becoming a singer in grand opera.
As time wore on the people in my district got to know me and talk more
freely. I soon learned that the idea of the Pope in Ireland was not a
figment of the music-teacher’s imagination. I was told repeatedly that
within a few years he would be moved to Ireland.
Soon after I went to live in the tenement on East Thirty-first Street I
got an even greater surprise. One Saturday afternoon a small, quietly
dressed woman appeared at the entrance of my little flat—the upper half
of the door being open she stood on the piazza. She asked for a
contribution to build a church and explained that she was taking from
five cents up.
Now I believe in the moral influence of a church building. Even though
the minister may not be of much significance I have found that in nine
cases out of ten having a church in a neighborhood lifts the tone. While
working for the A. S. P. C. A. I seldom passed a church in the tenements
without stepping in, even when I did not have time to sit down.
While I was getting my pocketbook the little woman at the door told me
about the church for which she was begging. It was to be the grandest in
the world, to cost more than a hundred million of dollars. It was to be
located at Washington, D. C. Then she added:
“The Pope is coming over to dedicate it. When he comes he’ll never go
back.”
I handed her twenty-five cents and told her that I hoped she would see
to it that I got a seat in case I was able to be present at the
dedication. She thanked me for my contribution, but very wisely, I
thought, refrained from promising me a seat. And I refrained from
telling her that I was not a child of the Pope’s.
After that many a time and oft I was assured that the Pope would come to
live in the United States. For days after the smashing of the windows of
the Union Club the tenements boiled. The Irish were in transports of
triumph. The United States was only a “Greater Ireland,” and the Pope
would surely come over here to live.
On my inquiring on which steamer the Pope had bought passage, the woman
who had been giving me the glad tidings became affronted. She haughtily
informed me that a battleship would be sent for him, with all our other
battle-crafts, great and small, to protect him from the English.
“The English always have been jealous of us,” I told her. “I know they
will, to the last man and woman of them, swell up and bust with jealousy
when we get the Pope over here.”
“It’ll serve ’em right,” she agreed.
Miss Stafford once asked me about religions, other than Catholic, met
with in the tenements. During my four years in the underbrush I saw and
came to know many persons, men and women, whom I would describe as
“God-fearing.” They were loyal citizens and doing the best they could
with their opportunities. None of them ever more than mentioned their
church, none of them spoke to me of knowing or ever meeting their
minister.
One of these was the woman who loved much, the woman whom Polly Preston
had the good fortune to meet and come to know. Though I lived in the
same tenement with her, talked with her day after day, I never heard her
mention the name of her minister, or in any way got the idea that she so
much as dreamed of his ever calling to see her.
I used to see the man who preached in the church that she
attended—walking down Fifth Avenue exuding wealth and overeating.
So far as I saw in the slums of New York City the Protestant minister of
the Gospel is as extinct as the dodo. There are preachers, at least one
for every Protestant church. Protestants living in the tenements sicken
and die, but they never dream of receiving a call or so much as a word
of inquiry from the well-fed individual under whose teachings they have
sat of a Sunday.
During my four years in the underbrush I never saw or heard of a
Protestant minister in the slums of New York City, nor in a hospital.
There never was a day that I did not meet at least one Catholic priest.
During the influenza epidemic they were everywhere, at all times, day
and night. They ministered to the sick, offered comfort to the living,
and buried the dead.
Many, many times while I was doing social work I had Catholic priests to
go out of their way to assure me of their willingness to help, to tell
me where I could locate them. They made no denominational distinction.
Once when I was calling on a patient at the Presbyterian Hospital there
chanced to be two priests in that ward of twelve beds. On their way out
both stopped and spoke to me, and gave me their addresses.
Several times I had occasion to call on the services of a priest. The
response was always immediate. I never had occasion to call on a
Protestant minister, for the Protestant who finds himself or herself in
the slums of New York City soon learns that they must die as they have
lived, unattended by a spiritual adviser.