A method of teaching arithmetic was in vogue some years ago by which the
answer to each problem was printed in the back of the book. Sometimes a
problem was stated wrongly or the answer given was incorrect. Of course,
that complicated matters. I believe they teach arithmetic differently
now.
Mildred worked unceasingly at her problem. She worked at it quite
cheerfully as she set out briskly in the morning for her two mile walk
from her home to the shop where she was employed as a cash girl. She
worked at it wearily as she crept home on tired swollen feet, when every
automobile as it whizzed past her seemed to scream “cash!” with its
shrill siren.
The problem dealt with figures so small it would seem a child in the
third grade could solve it. Mildred knew it to be so difficult that no
professor of mathematics could have brought her nearer the answer.
This was the problem, though Mildred did not state it in quite the same
way. Let _x_ equal $3.50, her earnings. From _x_, plus the very small
and uncertain earnings of her mother, take food for five plus rent and
leave enough for a neat black dress. She had multiplied the earnings by
many weeks but she had to multiply the food and rent by an equal number
and the answer never came right.
Sometimes, just to keep up her spirits, she would pretend she had solved
it—then what a pleasant array of problems presented themselves! The
black dress meant a clerk’s position and added salary. With that as a
beginning one might figure up to a buyer’s position. Somewhere between
lay the possibilities of some problems like this:
Let _x_ equal Mildred’s salary: _x_ minus rent, minus food, minus
clothes equals _y_, which is enough left over to permit the tired mother
to hire a woman for the washing.
One must be half starved and insufficiently clad to realize the
magnitude of that problem, rightly solved. The storms of early spring in
New York solve many problems by eliminating the mathematician. In
Mildred’s case they only postponed the solving.
Shoes have no hopes nor dreams, nor even problems, to keep them from
wearing out in miles of daily walking over cobblestones, and miles of
walking back and forth in the store. Mildred’s shoes developed gaps and
fissures, and were useless to keep out the wet. Rent was due. There was
no money to be spared even for carfare. So huge a sum as new shoes meant
was impossible.
Mildred developed pneumonia.
There are people in every city who put aside their own problems to help
solve those of others. To one in Mildred’s straits these became, no
longer dreaded agents of charity, to be avoided, but friends. It was due
to one of these friends that Mildred recovered. But with convalescence
returned her problem, its weary repetition standing between her and
health.
It was then the kindly agent went to her former employer. His sympathy
was sincere. There were tears in his eyes when the story was finished.
“That must never happen again,” he declared. “Tell her to come to me
if she is ever in trouble again. She shall have shoes, or whatever she
needs for comfort.”
Charity, however, was not what Mildred required, but adequate pay for
service. That could not be granted. It would establish that terrifying
thing, a precedent!
Elsewhere the agent met with better success, Mildred has employment
again and better pay: And with _x_ as a known and more satisfactory
basis, she forms her problems now.
But her old arithmetic remains the lesson book of how many other girls?