"Sick? and what is your disease? Lazyo-mania?"
"No, I am sick," the woman said, her eyes swimming with tears.
"Sick--what sickness?"
"I am sick. I can't tell you what sickness. I worked at pants--an
operator--and now I am sick. I have pains all over and I can't work. I
can't--I won't mind it for me--but my children go to bed without supper
and go to school without breakfast. And I can't stand it--I can't--I
never applied to charities--"
"Enough, enough," Cram interrupted. "Never applied to charity! I know
that gag. You shouldn't have applied now. A strong woman like you should
be ashamed--ashamed to come here with the other beggars," sweeping his
hand towards the others. "Go to work. You won't get a cent from here."
"But I can't. I am sick."
"Go to a hospital if you can't work."
"And my children?" sobbed the poor mother.
"Well, then, what do you want? A pension of $200 a month, a trip abroad,
a palace, a country house? Say--say quickly what do you want? I have no
time. You will get everything immediately. It's a fine job, Mr. Baer, is
it not?"
"I want to be helped out until I am well enough to work. My children are
hungry. They have had no breakfast to-day and there isn't any supper for
them either."
"That's the real stuff--her children. The more kids, the easier the
money. I tell you, some class to them, my friend."
Cram looked at her and then at the application, and after a moment's
thought he wrote on top of it, in blue pencil:
"To be investigated."
"Go home," he said to the woman.
"But Mr. ----"
"Go home, I say. We'll take care of it. That's all, don't stay here any
longer, don't get me angry."
"But I told you my children are hungry and cold--"
"I am not a groceryman--go home. I have no time. There are others--also
sick and with dead husbands and hungry children. Move on--good-day."
"But, Mr.--to-night my children have no supper and it's bitter cold."
"All right. We'll take care of that. Go home." And as the woman tried to
speak again: "Now go home and don't bother me."
Again he busied himself at the desk. The woman looked at him and then at
me. Big, heavy tears rolled down her careworn cheeks and she seemed to
me the very personification of suffering, the suffering of a mother who
sees her children tortured by gnawing hunger. She went away.
"Will you immediately send an investigator?" I asked Cram.
"In four or five days. Our investigators are very busy now and it's very
cold."
"Four or five days!" I was amazed. "And meanwhile, the children--what
about the poor kids?"
"Oh, well--it's not as terrible as all that. I don't believe all she
said," and again he repeated his favourite sentence: "I don't take any
stock in her story. It's all a fake--a fake."
Many other women and men were called, but I did not see or hear them.
These two were enough. Only the harsh and grating voice of Cram and the
bitter outcry of some applicant awoke me from my stupor.