the chamber in which I dwell has cost me no more than four dollars a
week. My clothes, with the exception of such minor changes as ties
and linen, are the very same I have had for several years. I am so
poor at this writing that I have not patronized a theater in months. A
tasteful restaurant such as always I would prefer has this long while
been beyond my purse. I have even been beset by a nervous depression
which has all but destroyed my power to write, or to sell that which
I might write. And, as I well know, illness and death might at any
time interfere and cut short the struggle that in my case has thus far
proved materially most profitless; and yet, believe me, I have never
felt poor, or that I have been cheated of much that life might give.
Nor have I felt that sense of poverty that appears to afflict thousands
of those about me.
[Illustration: Being Poor]
I cannot go to a theater, for instance, lacking the means. But I can
and do go to many of the many, many museums, exhibits, collections and
arboreta that are open to me for nothing in this great city. And for
greater recreation even, I turn to such books of travel, of discovery,
of scientific and philosophic investigation and speculation as chance
to fit in with my mood at the time and with which a widespread public
beneficence has provided me, and where I find such pleasure, such
relief, such delight as I should hesitate to attempt to express in
words.
But apart from these, which are after all but reports of and
commentaries upon the other, comes the beauty of life itself. I know
it to be a shifting, lovely, changeful thing ever, and to it, the
spectacle of it as a whole, in my hours of confusion and uncertainty
I invariably return, and find such marvels of charm in color, tone,
movement, arrangement, which, had I the genius to report, would fill
the museums and the libraries of the world to overflowing with its
masterpieces. The furies of snow and rain that speed athwart a hidden
sun. The wracks and wisps of cloud that drape a winter or a summer
moon. A distant, graceful tower from which a flock of pigeons soar. The
tortuous, tideful rivers that twist among great forests of masts and
under many graceful bridges. The crowding, surging ways of seeking men.
These cost me nothing, and I weary of them never.
And sunsets. And sunrises. And moonsets. And moonrises. These are not
things to which those materially deficient would in the main turn for
solace, but to me they are substances of solace, the major portion of
all my wealth or possible wealth, in exchange for which I would not
take a miser’s hoard. I truly would not.
SIX O’CLOCK
The hours in which the world is working are numerous and always
fascinating. It is not the night-time or the Sabbath or the day of
pleasure that counts, but the day’s work. Whether it be as statesman
or soldier, poet or laborer, the day’s work is the thing. And at the
end of the day’s work, in its commoner forms at least, comes the signal
of its accomplishment, the whistle, the bell, the fading light, the
arresting face of the clock.
To me, personally, there is no hour which quite equals that which
heralds the close of the day’s toil. I know, too, that others are
important, the getting up and lying down of men, but this of ceasing
after a day’s work, when we lay down the ax or the saw, or the pen
or pencil, stay our machine, take off our apron and quit--that is
wonderful. Others may quit earlier. The lawyer and the merchant and the
banker may cease their labors an hour earlier. The highly valued clerk
or official is not opposed if he leaves at four-thirty or at five, and
at five-thirty skilled labor generally may cease. But at six o’clock
the rank and file are through, “the great unwashed,” as they have been
derisively termed, the real laboring man and laboring woman. It is for
them then that the six o’clock whistle blows; that the six o’clock bell
strikes; it is for them that the evening lamps are lit in millions of
homes; it is for them that the blue smoke of an evening fire curls
upward at nightfall and that the street cars and vehicles of transfer
run thick and black.
The streets are pouring with them at six o’clock. They are as a
great tide in the gray and dark. They come bearing their baskets and
buckets, their armfuls of garnered wood, their implements of labor and
of accomplishment, and their faces streaked with the dirt of their
toil. While you and I, my dear sir, have been sitting at our ease this
last hour they have been working, and where we began at nine they
began at seven. They have worked all day, not from seven-thirty until
five-thirty or from nine until four, but from seven to six, and they
are weary.
You can see it in their faces. Some have a lean, pinched appearance
as though they were but poorly nourished or greatly enervated. Some
have a furtive, hurried look, as though the problem of rent and food
and clothing were inexplicable and they were thinking about it all the
time. Some are young yet and unscathed--the most are young (for the
work of the world is done by the youth of the world)--and they do not
see as yet to what their labor tends. Nearly all are still lightened
with a sense of opportunity; for what may the world not hold in store?
Are not its bells still tinkling, its lights twinkling? Are not youth
and health and love the solvents of all our woes?
[Illustration: Six O’clock]
These crowds when the whistles blow come as great movements of the sea
come. If you stand in the highways of traffic they are at once full to
overflowing. If you watch the entrance to great mills they pour forth
a living stream, dark, energetic, undulant. To see them melting
away into the highways and byways is like seeing a stream tumble and
sparkle, like listening to the fading echoes of a great bell. They
come, vivid, vibrant, like a deep, full-throated note. They go again as
bell notes finally go.
If you stand at the entrance of one of our great industrial
institutions you may see for yourself. Its walls are like those of
a prison, tall, dark, many-windowed; its sound like that of a vast
current of water pouring over a precipice. Inside a thousand or
a hundred thousand shuttles may be crashing; I know not. Patient
figures are hurrying to and fro. You may see them through the brightly
lighted windows of a winter’s night. Suddenly the great whistle sounds
somewhere in the thick of the city. Then another and another. In a
moment a score and a hundred siren voices are calling out the hour of
cessation and the rush of the great world of machinery is stilling. The
figures disappear from the machines. The tiny doors at the bottom of
the walls open. Out they come, hurrying, white-faced, black-shawled,
the vast contingent of men and boys, girls and children; into the black
night they hurry, the fresh winds sweeping about their insignificant
figures. This is but one mill and all over the world as the planet
rolls eastward these whistles are blowing, the factories are ceasing,
the figures are pouring forth.
It is on such as these, O students of economics, that all our fine-spun
fancies of life are based. It is on such as these that our statecraft
is erected. Kings sit in palaces, statesmen confer in noble halls,
because of these and such as these. The science of government--it _is_
because of these. The art of production--it is by and for these. The
importance of distribution--it concerns these. All our carefully woven
theories of morals, of health, of property--they have these for their
being; without them they are not.
The world runs with a rushing tide of life these days. It has broken
forth into a veritable storm of creation. Men are born by the millions.
They die in great masses silently. To-day they are here, to-morrow cut
down and put away. But in these crowds of workers we see the flower
of it all, the youth, the enthusiasm, the color. Life is here at its
highest, not death. There are no sick here: they have dropped out.
There are no halt, or very few, no lame. All the weaklings have been
cut down and there remains here, running in a hurrying, sparkling
stream, the energy, the strength, the hope of the world. That they may
not be too hardly used is obvious, for then life itself ceases; that
they may not be too utterly brutalized is sure, for then life itself
becomes too brutal for endurance. That they may only be driven in part
is a material truism. They cannot be driven too far; they must be led
in part. For that the maxim, “Feed my sheep.”
But in the spectacle of living there is none other like this. It is all
that life may ever be, energetic, hungry, eager. It is the hope of the
world, and the yearning of the world concentrated. Here are passion,
desire, despair, running eagerly away. The great whistles of the world
sound their presence nightly. The sinking of the sun marks their sure
approach. It is six o’clock, and the work of the day is ended--for the
night.
THE TOILERS OF THE TENEMENTS
New York City has one hundred thousand people who, under unfavorable
conditions, work with their fingers for so little money that they are
understood, even by the uninitiated general public, to form a class by
themselves. These are by some called sewing-machine workers, by others
tenement toilers, and by still others sweatshop employees; but, in a
general sense, the term, tenement workers, includes them all. They form
a great section in one place, and in others little patches, ministered
to by storekeepers and trade agents who are as much underpaid and
nearly as hard-working as they themselves.
Go into any one of these areas and you will encounter a civilization
that is as strange and un-American as if it were not included in this
land at all. Pushcarts and market-stalls are among the most distinctive
features. Little stores and grimy windows are also characteristic of
these sections. There is an atmosphere of crowdedness and poverty
which goes with both. Any one can see that these people are living
energetically. There is something about the hurry and enthusiasm of
their life that reminds you of ants.
If you stay and turn your attention from the traffic proper, the houses
begin to attract your attention. They are nearly all four-story or
five-story buildings, with here and there one of six, and still another
of seven stories; all without elevators, and all, with the exception of
the last, exceedingly old. There are narrow entrance-ways, dingy and
unlighted, which lead up dark and often rickety stairs. There are other
alley-ways, which lead, like narrow tunnels, to rear tenements and back
shops. Iron fire escapes descend from the roof to the first floor, in
every instance, because the law compels it. Iron stairways sometimes
ascend, where no other means of entrance is to be had. There are old
pipes which lead upward and carry water. No such thing as sanitary
plumbing exists. You will not often see a gas-light in a hall in as
many as two blocks of houses. You will not see one flat in ten with hot
and cold water arrangements. Other districts have refrigerators and
stationary washstands, and bath tubs as a matter of course, but these
people do not know what modern conveniences mean. Steam heat and hot
and cold water tubs and sinks have never been installed in this area.
The houses are nearly all painted a dull red, and nearly all are
divided in the most unsanitary manner. Originally they were built five
rooms deep, with two flats on a floor, but now the single flats have
been subdivided and two or three, occasionally four or five, families
live and toil in the space which was originally intended for one.
There are families so poor, or so saving and unclean, that they huddle
with other families, seven or eight persons in two rooms. Iron stands
covered by plain boards make a bed which can be enlarged or reduced at
will. When night comes, four, five, six, sometimes seven such people
stretch out on these beds. When morning comes the bedclothes, if such
they may be called, are cleared away and the board basis is used as a
table. One room holds the stove, the cooking utensils, the chairs, and
the sewing machine. The other contains the bed, the bed-clothing, and
various kinds of stored material. Eating, sleeping, and usually some
washing are done there.
I am giving the extreme instances, unfortunately common to the point
of being numerous. In the better instances three or four people are
housed in two rooms. How many families there are that live less closely
quartered than this would not be very easy to say. On the average, five
people live in two rooms. A peddler or a pushcart man who can get to
where he can occupy two rooms, by having his wife and children work, is
certain that he is doing well. Fathers and mothers, sons and daughters,
go out to work. If the father cannot get work and the mother can, then
that is the order of procedure. If the daughter cannot get work and the
mother and father can, it is the daughter’s duty to take care of the
house and take in sewing. If any of the boys and girls are too young to
go out and enter the shops, duty compels them to help on the piecework
that is taken into the rooms. Everything is work, in one form or
another, from morning until night.
As for the people themselves, they are a strange mixture of all races
and all creeds. Day after day you will see express wagons and trucks
leaving the immigration station at the Battery, loaded to crowding with
the latest arrivals, who are being taken as residents to one or another
colony of this crowded section. There are Greeks, Italians, Russians,
Poles, Syrians, Armenians and Hungarians. Jews are so numerous that
they have to be classified with the various nations whose language
they speak. All are poverty-stricken, all venturing into this new world
to make their living. The vast majority have absolutely nothing more
than the ten dollars which the immigration inspectors are compelled to
see that they have when they arrive. These people recruit the territory
in question.
In the same hundred thousand, and under the same tenement conditions,
are many who are not foreign-born. I know personally of American
fathers who have got down to where it is necessary to work as these
foreigners work. There are home-grown American mothers who have never
been able to lift themselves above the conditions in which they find
themselves to-day. Thousands of children born and reared in New York
City are growing up under conditions which would better become a slum
section of Constantinople.
I know a chamber in this section where, at a plain wooden bench
or table, sits a middle-aged Hungarian and his wife, with a
fifteen-year-old daughter, sewing. The Hungarian is perhaps not
honestly Gentile, for he looks as if he might have Hebrew blood in
his veins. The mother and the daughter partake of a dark olive tinge,
more characteristic of the Italian than of anything else. It must be
a coincidence, however, for these races rarely mix. Between them and
upon a nearby chair are piled many pairs of trousers, all awaiting
their labor. Two buckles and a button must be sewed on every one. The
rough edges at the bottom must be turned up and basted, and the
inside about the top must be lined with a kind of striped cotton which
is already set loosely in place. It is their duty to sew closely with
their hands what is already basted. No machine worker can do this work,
and so it is sent out to such as these, under the practice of tenement
distribution. Their duty is to finish it.
[Illustration: Toilers of the Tenements]
There would be no need to call attention to these people except that in
this instance they have unwittingly violated the law. Tenement workers,
under the new dispensation, cannot do exactly as they please. It is not
sufficient for them to have an innate and necessitous desire to work.
They must work under special conditions. Thus, it is now written that
the floors must be clean and the ceilings whitewashed. There must not
be any dirt on the walls. No room in which they work must have such
a thing as a bed in it, and no three people may ever work together
in one room. Law and order prescribe that one is sufficient. These
others--father and daughter, or mother and daughter, or mother and
father--should go out into the shops, leaving just one here to work.
Such is the law.
These three people, who have only these two trades, have complied with
scarcely any of these provisions. The room is not exactly as clean as
it should be. The floor is dirty. Overhead is a smoky ceiling, and in
one corner is a bed. The two small windows before which they labor
do not give sufficient ventilation, and so the air in the chamber is
stale. Worst of all, they are working three in a chamber, and have no
license.
“How now,” asks an inspector, opening the door--for there is very
little civility of manner observed by these agents of the law who
constantly regulate these people--“any pants being finished here?”
“How?” says the Hungarian, looking purblindly up. It is nothing new to
him to have his privacy thus invaded. Unless he has been forewarned and
has his door locked, police and detectives, to say nothing of health
inspectors and other officials, will frequently stick their heads in
or walk in and inquire after one thing or another. Sometimes they
go leisurely through his belongings and threaten him for concealing
something. There is a general tendency to lord it over and browbeat
him, for what reason he has no conception. Other officials do it in the
old country; perhaps it is the rule here.
“So,” says the inspector, stepping authoritatively forward, “finishing
pants, eh? All three of you? Got a license?”
“Vot?” inquires the pale Hungarian, ceasing his labor.
“Where is your license--your paper? Haven’t you got a paper?”
The Hungarian, who has not been in this form of work long enough to
know the rules, puts his elbows on the table and gazes nervously into
the newcomer’s face. What is this now that the gentleman wants? His
wife looks her own inquiry and speaks of it to her daughter.
“What is it he wants?” says the father to the child.
“It is a paper,” returns the daughter in Hungarian. “He says we must
have a license.”
“Paper?” repeats the Hungarian, looking up and shaking his head in the
negative. “No.”
“Oh, so you haven’t got a license then? I thought so. Who are you
working for?”
The father stares at the child. Seeing that he does not understand, the
inspector goes on: “The boss, the boss! What boss gave you these pants
to finish?”
“Oh,” returns the little girl, who understands somewhat better than the
rest, “the boss, yes. He wants to know what boss gave us these pants.”
This last in a foreign tongue to her father.
“Tell him,” says the mother in Hungarian, “that the name is Strakow.”
“Strakow,” repeats the daughter.
“Strakow, eh?” says the inspector. “Well, I’ll see Mr. Strakow. You
must not work on these any more. Do you hear? Listen, you,” and he
turns the little girl’s face up to him, “you tell your father that he
can’t do any more of this work until he gets a license. He must go up
to No. 1 Madison Avenue and get a paper. I don’t know whether they’ll
give it to him or not, but he can go and ask. Then he must clean this
floor. The ceiling must be whitewashed--see?”
The little girl nods her head.
“You can’t keep this bed in here, either,” he adds. “You must move the
bed out into the other room if you can. You mustn’t work here. Only one
can work here. Two of you must go out into the shop.”
All the time the careworn parents are leaning forward eagerly, trying
to catch the drift of what they cannot possibly understand. Both
interrupt now and then with a “What is it?” in Hungarian, which the
daughter has no time to heed. She is so busy trying to understand half
of it herself that there is no time for explanation. Finally she says
to her parents:
“He says we cannot all work here.”
“Vot?” says the father. “No vork?”
“No,” replies the daughter. “Three of us can’t work in one room. It’s
against the law. Only one. He says that only one can work in this room.”
“How!” he exclaims, as the little girl goes on making vaguely apparent
what these orders are. As she proceeds the old fellow’s face changes.
His wife leans forward, her whole attitude expressive of keen,
sympathetic anxiety.
“No vork?” he repeats. “I do no more vork?”
“No,” insists the inspector, “not with three in one room.”
The Hungarian puts out his right leg, and it becomes apparent that an
injury has befallen him. Words he pours upon his daughter, who explains
that he has been a pushcart peddler but has received a severe injury to
his leg and cannot walk. Helping to sew is all that he can do.
“Well,” says the inspector when he hears of this, “that’s too bad, but
I can’t help it. It’s the law. You’ll have to see the department about
it. I can’t help it.”
Astonished and distressed, the daughter explains, and then they sit in
silence. Five cents a pair is all they have been able to earn since
the time the father became expert, and all they can do, working from
five in the morning until eleven at night, is two dozen pairs a day--in
other words, to earn seven dollars and twenty cents a week. If they
delay for anything, as they often must, the income drops to six, and
quite often to five, dollars. Two dollars a week is their tax for rent.
“So!” says the father, his mouth open. He is too deeply stricken and
nonplussed to know what to do. The mother nervously turns her hands.
“You hear now,” says the inspector, taking out a tag and fastening it
upon the goods--“no more work. Go and see the department.”
“How?” asks the father, staring at his helpless family after the door
has closed.
How indeed!
In the same round the inspector will come a little later to the shop
from which the old Hungarian secured the trousers for finishing. He
is armed with full authority over all of these places. In his pocket
lie the tags, one of which he puts on a lot of clothing just ordered
halted. If that tag is removed it is a penal offense. If it stays
on no one can touch the goods until the contractor explains to the
factory inspector how he has come to be giving garments for finishing
to dwellers in tenements who have not a license. This is a criminal
offense on his part. Now he must not touch the clothes he sent over
there. If the old Hungarian returns them he must not accept them or
pay him any money. This contractor and his clients offer a study in
themselves.
His shop is on the third floor of a rear building, which was once
used for dwelling purposes but is now given over entirely to clothing
manufactories or sweatshops. A flight of dark, ill-odored, rickety
stairs gives access to it. There is noise and chatter audible, a thick
mixture of sounds from whirring sewing machines and muttering human
beings. When you open the door a gray-haired Hebrew, whose long beard
rests patriarchally upon his bosom, looks over his shoulders at you
from a brick furnace, where he is picking up a reheated iron. Others
glance up from their bent positions over machines and ironing-boards.
It is a shadowy, hot-odored, floor-littered room.
“Have you a finisher doing work for you by the name of Koslovsky?”
inquires the inspector of a thin, bright-eyed Syrian Jew, who is
evidently the proprietor of this establishment.
“Koslovsky?” he says after him, in a nervous, fawning, conciliatory
manner. “Koslovsky? What is he? No.”
“Finisher, I said.”
“Yes, finisher--finisher, that’s it. He does no work for me--only a
little--a pair of pants now and then.”
“You knew that he didn’t have a license, didn’t you?”
“No, no. I did not. No license? Did he not have a license?”
“You’re supposed to know that. I’ve told you that before. You’ll have
to answer at the office for this. I’ve tagged his goods. Don’t you
receive them now. Do you hear?”
“Yes,” says the proprietor excitedly. “I would not receive them. He
will get no more work from me. When did you do that?”
“Just this morning. Your goods will go up to headquarters.”
“So,” he replied weakly. “That is right. It is just so. Come over here.”
The inspector follows him to a desk in the corner.
“Could you not help me out of this?” he asks, using a queer Jewish
accent. “I did not know this once. You are a nice man. Here is a
present for you. It is funny I make this mistake.”
“No,” returns the inspector, shaking his head. “Keep your money. I
can’t do anything. These goods are tagged. You must learn not to give
out finishing to people without a license.”