The head investigator, a woman who was once a socialist, and considers
herself now a social worker, was announced to lecture. Her subject was
"Advice to consumptives living in a large city." The subject was
interesting and the lecturer an acquaintance of mine, so I decided to go
and hear her. When the doors opened the hall was crowded with people. It
was in her own district and she had decided to make a big show. All the
poor depending on her were ordered to the lecture. Willy nilly, they had
to go.
An interesting lot they were as they sat huddled up in old rags, their
street clothes left at home, those they had on the poorest they could
find. All pale, haggard, hungry, they really needed the advice.
Mrs. B. was a good talker and had her subject well in hand. Her son is a
physician and from him she got all the fine points, figures and
explanations. She started out very convincingly and proved that poverty
and ignorance go hand in hand and are the father and mother of
tuberculosis. She went on to explain the absolute necessity of rich and
wholesome food (What irony--they that get two or three dollars a week
shall have rich and wholesome food!), diversion, quiet, and above all
"Air, fresh air all the time--Live on the top floor, do not mind the few
stairs more! Sleep on the roof in the summer, and keep your windows
open! For God's sake keep your windows open!... Let the sunshine clean
your room--Light and air are the greatest enemies of microbes and
tuberculosis and the greatest friend of man, especially the one touched
with the white plague. Breathe, breathe every time you get a chance.
Purify your lungs and keep under God's blue roof the greater part of
your time."
Thus she finished. There was the usual applause and the usual questions
by some outsiders, and that was all. At the finish we walked together,
Mrs. B. and I, for a half hour and we spoke about the poor and their
condition, about the iniquity of the present system, and her former work
for Socialism, and she told me how she had pawned her watch and chain to
pay the printers that were setting up the first Socialist weekly.
Naturally I was astonished to hear that. I knew that she was one of the
most cruel questioners at the office. If something was to be found out
she was appealed to. She had a heart of stone, of granite, and her
sensuous mouth could assume a smile that set the poor applicant
trembling.
"And where is he now, your husband? Do you think that I am such a fool
as to believe a single word of what you say?" And when the woman would
cry she would say "Rot, rot, rubbish. I am too old in the business."
Such was her attitude. How could she be so sincere when she spoke to
others? How could she pawn her watch for a struggling Socialist paper?
Was she once better, had her work killed her heart? Thus was I thinking
when I left her, and was already trying to excuse her because I found
that I too had, in my work for the Charity Institution, lost a good deal
of my faith in mankind.
Some weeks afterwards, I was investigating the case of a tailor who was
taken to the hospital suffering from the white plague. He had a wife and
four children ranging from three to fourteen years. The woman had
applied to charity and the office had a suspicion that the man belonged
to an organisation that paid a sick benefit and was consequently not
entitled to charity. I found out, through the secretary, that the man
had once been a member but having fallen in arrears with his dues he was
disqualified and was not receiving any benefits. The family was living
on a first floor rear apartment in Monroe Street, two rooms, where the
sunshine never comes, with windows opening in the yard, an ill-smelling
dirty yard, and the people had no idea of hygiene. They never kept
separate the dishes and pillows used by the sick one. They ate from them
and slept on them.
The children, pale and sick, three of them short-sighted, the mother and
little child with inflamed eyes, were in a horrible condition.
I immediately advised the office and succeeded in getting the family
moved to the Bronx, near a park, and on the fifth floor. So little were
the children accustomed to light that the first few days they felt
dizzy. Their clothes and bedding was disinfected. Hurriedly the family
was put on the pension list, rent, coal and three dollars per week. It
was not much, it was not enough, but it was the best I could obtain for
the unfortunate people.
A few weeks later the oldest girl too was taken to the hospital and the
mother was treated in one of the clinics in the neighbourhood. She
obtained two quarts of milk a day free.
They had not been long in the country--four or five years; had
previously lived in a little village in Northern Russia. The man was a
dealer in grains there, was always in the open air. The sudden change to
a big city, a sweatshop, was too much for him, too much for all of them.
Several months later, while I was in the neighbourhood, I went to visit
the family. At the door of the fifth floor, I was told they had moved
away long ago. Where? The people did not know, nor did the janitor, nor
did the neighbours. When I returned to the office I looked up the
records and found their new address, 171st Street. I took a note of it,
and as my work brought me there a few days later, I called in. I was
astonished to find the people living in a basement--the rooms were next
to the engine room. It was a big apartment house and the heat in the
rooms was suffocating.
"Woman," I cried, "what have you done? Why did you move from the other
place?"
"The investigator told me to," was her answer.
"But you are killing yourself, ruining the broken health of your
children."
She shrugged her shoulders, the children coughed, and even the baby had
eyeglasses on. It was the district of Mrs. B.--the investigator who
lectured so well on tuberculosis. I waited for her in the office and
asked her why she had moved the family from the top floor to the
basement.
"I can't run up so many stairs every day," she answered angrily. "I have
a big district and they all live on top floors. Basements are cheaper
and it is easier for me," she went on.
"But, Mrs. B., the whole family is touched by the plague. You know
better than they do how necessary it is for them to live in light and
airy rooms. You lecture on the subject."
To all this the investigator answered, "It's easy to lecture but to
climb so many floors a day is too hard. Let them live in the basement.
They will not die. It's not so terrible. Let them sit in the park ...
let them go up on the roof."
No amount of talk could persuade her that it was dangerous for the
people to live, eat, sleep in the basement, and when I had succeeded in
convincing the manager that a change should be made, and I called on the
woman, she was already so drilled by the investigator that she claimed
her legs hurt her and her heart was weak and I had to give it up. She
would not move from the basement.
A second child was taken to the hospital in a few months, but as a
recompense for the mother's good behaviour the investigator did not, as
usual, reduce the pension of the family.
The father died, the two older girls died, the mother with the other
children returned to Russia to live ... to die.