"Go quickly, please, to No. -- East Eleventh Street, near the river," was
the burden of a message received one day in the Charities Building; "a
Hungarian family is in trouble." The little word that covers the widest
range in the language gives marching orders daily to many busy feet
thereabouts, and, before the October sun had set, a visitor from the
Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor had climbed
to the fourth floor of the tenement and found the Josefy family. This was
what she discovered there: a man in the last stages of consumption, a
woman within two weeks of her confinement, five hungry children, a
landlord clamoring for his rent. The man had long ceased to earn the
family living. His wife, taking up that burden with the rest, had worked
on cloaks for a sweater until she also had to give up. In fact, the work
gave out just as their need was greatest. Now, with the new baby coming,
no preparation had been made to receive it. For those already there, there
was no food in the house.
They had once been well off. Josefy was a tailor, and had employed nearly
a score of hands in the busy season. He paid forty-four dollars a month
rent then. That day the landlord had threatened to dispossess them for one
month's arrears of seven dollars, and only because of the rain had given
them a day's grace. All the money saved up in better days had gone to pay
doctor and druggist, without making Josefy any better. His wife listened
dismally to the recital of their troubles and asked for work--any light
work that she could do.
The rent was paid, and the baby came. They were eight then, subsisting, as
the society's records show, in January on the earnings of Mrs. Josefy
making ladies' blouse sleeves at twenty-five cents a dozen pairs, in
February on the receipts of embroidering initials on napkins at fifteen
cents apiece, in March on her labors in a downtown house on sample cloaks.
Three dollars a week was her wage there. To save car-fare she walked to
her work and back, a good two miles each way, getting up at 3 A.M. to do
her home washing and cleaning first. In bad weather they were poorer by
ten cents a day, because then she had to ride. The neighbors were kind;
the baker left them bread twice a week and the butcher gave them a little
meat now and then. The father's hemorrhages were more frequent. When, on a
slippery day, one of the children, going for milk, fell in the street and
spilled it, he went without his only food, as they had but eight cents in
the house. In May came the end. The tailor died, and in the house of
mourning there was one care less, one less to feed and clothe. The widow
gathered her flock close and faced the future dry-eyed. The luxury of
grief is not for those at close grips with stern poverty.
When word reached far-off Hungary, Mrs. Josefy's sister wrote to her to
come back; she would send the money. The widow's friends rejoiced, but she
shook her head. To face poverty as bitter there? This was her children's
country; it should be hers too. At the Consulate they reasoned with her;
the chance was too good to let pass. When she persisted, they told her to
put the children in a home, then; she could never make her way with so
many. No doubt they considered her an ungrateful person when she flatly
refused to do either. It is not in the record that she ever darkened the
door of the Consulate again.
The charitable committee had no better success. They offered her passage
money, and she refused it. "She is always looking for work," writes the
visitor in the register, for once in her life a little resentfully, it
would almost seem. When finally tickets came at the end of a year, Victor,
the oldest boy, must finish his schooling first. Exasperated, the
committee issues its ultimatum: she must go, or put the children away. Dry
bread was the family fare when Mrs. Josefy was confronted with it, but she
met it as firmly: Never! she would stay and do the best she could.
The record which I have followed states here that the committee dropped
her, but stood by to watch the struggle, half shamefacedly one cannot help
thinking, though they had given the best advice they knew. Six months
later the widow reports that "the children had never wanted something to
eat."
At this time Victor is offered a job, two dollars and a half a week, with
a chance of advancement. The mother goes out house-cleaning. Together they
live on bread and coffee to save money for the rent, but she refuses the
proffered relief. Victor is in the graduating class; he must finish his
schooling. Just then her sewing-machine is seized for debt. The committee,
retreating in a huff after a fresh defeat over the emigration question,
hastens to the rescue, glad of a chance, and it is restored. In sheer
admiration at her pluck they put it down that "she is doing the best she
can to keep her family together." There is a curious little entry here
that sizes up the children. They had sent them to Coney Island on a
vacation, but at night they were back home. "No one spoke to them there,"
is their explanation. They had their mother's pride.
It happened in the last month of that year that I went out to speak in a
suburban New Jersey town. "Neighbors" was my topic. I was the guest of the
secretary of a Foreign Mission Board that has its office in the
Presbyterian Building on Fifth Avenue. That night when we sat at dinner
the talk ran on the modern methods of organized charity. "Yes," said my
host, as his eyes rested on the quiverful seated around the board, "it is
all good. But best of all would be if you could find for me a widow, say,
with children like my own, whom my wife could help in her own way, and the
children learn to take an interest in. I have no chance, as you know. The
office claims all my time. But they--that would be best of all, for them
and for us."
And he was right; that would be charity in the real meaning of the word:
friendship, the neighborly lift that gets one over the hard places in the
road. The other half would cease to be, on that plan, and we should all be
one great whole, pulling together, and our democracy would become real. I
promised to find him such a widow.
But it proved a harder task than I had thought. None of the widows I knew
had six children. The charitable societies had no family that fitted my
friend's case. But in time I found people who knew about Mrs. Josefy. The
children were right--so many boys and so many girls; what they told me
of the mother made me want to know more. I went over to East Eleventh
Street at once. On the way the feeling grew upon me that I had found my
friend's Christmas present--I forgot to say that it was on Christmas
Eve--and when I saw them and gathered something of the fight that splendid
little woman had waged for her brood those eight long years, I knew that
my search was over. When we had set up a Christmas tree together, to the
wild delight of the children, and I had ordered a good dinner from a
neighboring restaurant on my friend's account, I hastened back to tell him
of my good luck and his. I knew he was late at the office with his mail.
[Illustration: "WHEN WE HAD SET UP A CHRISTMAS TREE TOGETHER, TO THE WILD
DELIGHT OF THE CHILDREN."]
Half-way across town it came to me with a sense of shock that I had
forgotten something. Mrs. Josefy had told me that she scrubbed in a
public building, but where I had not asked. Perhaps it would not have
seemed important to you. It did to me, and when I had gone all the way
back and she answered my question, I knew why. Where do you suppose she
scrubbed? In the Presbyterian Building! Under his own roof was the
neighbor he sought. Almost they touched elbows, yet were they farther
apart than the poles. Were, but no longer to be. The very next day brought
my friend and his wife in from their Jersey home to East Eleventh Street.
Long years after I found this entry on the register, under date January
20, 1899:
"Mrs. Josefy states that she never had such a happy Christmas since she
came to this country. The children were all so happy, and every one had
been so kind to them."
It was the beginning of better days for the Josefy family. Weary stretches
of hard road there were ahead yet, but they were no longer lonesome. The
ladies' committee that had once so hotly blamed her were her friends to
the last woman, for she had taught them with her splendid pluck what it
should mean to be a mother of Americans. They did not offer to carry her
then any more than before, but they went alongside with words of
neighborly cheer and saw her win over every obstacle. Two years later
finds her still working in the Presbyterian Building earning sixteen
dollars a month and leaving her home at five in the morning. Her oldest
boy is making four dollars and a half a week, and one of the girls is
learning dressmaking. The others are all in school. One may be sure
without asking that they are not laggards there. When the youngest, at
twelve, is wanted by her friends of the mission board to "live out" with
them, the mother refuses to let her go, at the risk of displeasing her
benefactors. The child must go to school and learn a trade. Three years
more, and all but the youngest are employed. Mrs. Josefy has had a long
illness, but she reports that she can help herself. They are now paying
fourteen dollars a month rent. On April 6, 1904, the last entry but one is
made on the register: the family is on dry ground and the "case is
closed."
The last but one. That one was added after a gap of eight years when I
made inquiries for the Josefys the other day. Eight years is a long time
in the Charities Buildings with a heavy burden of human woe and failure.
Perhaps for that very reason they had not forgotten Mrs. Josefy, but they
had lost trace of her. She had left her old home in Eleventh Street, and
all that was known was that she was somewhere up near Fort Washington. I
asked that they find her for me, and a week later I read this entry in the
register, where, let us hope, the case of the Josefys is now closed for
all time:
"The Josefys live now at No. -- West One Hundred and Eighty --st Street in
a handsome flat of six sunny rooms. The oldest son, who is a cashier in a
broker's office on a salary of $35 a week, is the head of the family. His
brother earns $20 a week in a downtown business. Two of the daughters are
happily married; another is a stenographer. The youngest, the baby of the
dark days in the East Side tenement, was graduated from school last year
and is ready to join the army of workers. The mother begins to feel her
years, but is happy with her children."
Some Christmas Eve I will go up and see them and take my friend from the
Presbyterian Building along.
This is the story of a poor woman, daughter of a proud and chivalrous
people, whose sons have helped make great fortunes grow in our land and
have received scant pay and scantier justice in return, and of whom it is
the custom of some Americans to speak with contempt as "Huns."