MUTUAL INTERESTS.MUTUAL INTERESTS.
A young girl joined a club for young people. From the first she caused anxiety. Her face was innocent and attractive, but her actions with young men were just the reverse. At last it became necessary to speak to her. It was evident that she attributed the criticism to what she termed "fussiness." Not the least modification in her manner followed. At last, after many interviews, she was told that she would never be spoken to again. If she offended in the club-room once more, she would be given her hat. That would mean that she was not to again enter those rooms. She confided to her intimate friend that no one had ever told her that what she did was wrong. After this interview, a modification of her manner was noticed, not because she was convinced she was wrong, but because she thought it wise to heed. A group of young people were returning from a picnic. Just after the homeward journey had begun, it was seen that this young girl was sitting in the lap of a young man whom she had always known; as children they lived for years in the same tenement. Beside him sat the young girl whom he had invited to the club picnic. The club girl sat so unconscious of any infringement of manners, public or private, that a young man who had grown up under the same conditions was asked what he thought of the act. He started at once to tell the girl to stand up, but was restrained. Evidently he was shocked, and the act was wrong from his standpoint, the only standpoint fair to the girl. A seat was made forthe girl elsewhere, who, for the first time, showed distress, or rather anxiety, because of her own acts. Nothing was said to her.
Occasion was made to speak to the young man who had kept his seat and let the girl sit in his lap. He was a working man, and his hands showed it. All his life of twenty-two years he had lived under tenement-house conditions.
"Frank, would you marry a girl who sat in a man's lap in a railroad train?" he was asked.
"No," he responded indignantly.
"Do you suppose you are the only man in the world who has that feeling? What right have you to let any girl cheapen herself so that the man who saw her with you, doing what you permitted, if you did not suggest and encourage, would not marry her?"
The man's face grew white. He had a sister of whom he was very fond and very proud.
"What would you do to the man who permitted your sister, when she was tired, to do what you permitted a girl to do to-night—a girl who has no brother to watch over her?"
The young man was six feet tall. He rose to his feet, and, raising his hands toward the starlit sky, he said:
"As true as there is a God above me, I will never while I live let any girl do whatI am not willing my own sister should do anywhere."
After a moment's quiet, the chaperon said:
"I shall never mention this to the girl. I hold you responsible. You are stronger mentally, morally and physically, and are wholly to blame." Whether he spoke to the girl or not, no one knows, but never again was it necessary to even mentally criticise that young girl's manners with young men. Not only did her manners change, but the expression of her face. One grew to love and trust her, and ask her help for other girls.
The chivalry of the working boys and young men is constantly seen, unconsciously revealed. Sometimes it is dangerous the degree in which it shows itself among the finest of the boys. A sick girl, unable to go out, will command attentions so special and direct that the fear of her misunderstanding, and suffering because she has not understood, will make those interested who know the danger unhappy; sympathy from any cause will make a great-hearted working boy place himself in a position where he may be easily misunderstood.
It is astonishing how long the spirit of childhood will live in working boys and girls, even under conditions that seem never to justify happiness and spontaneity!
One Sunday a group of working men and girls went nutting, being duly and properly chaperoned. Four of the young men climbed a big walnut tree. The girls, with some of the young men, were gathered at the foot, waiting for the shower of nuts. The chaperon sat on a stone fence a little way off. The wind began to blow, swaying the top branches. One of the young men having a good voice laid himself along a limb high from the ground, singing "Rock-a-bye, baby, on the tree top." The others took it up and the girls joined in. Over and over it was sung. Then the girls and boys on the ground joined hands outside the span of the tree and sang "Ring around a rosy." Every singing game of childhood was enthusiastically played. Every one of these young people were poor as the world counts wealth—every one over eighteen—all had worked from the first moment they could earn wages. Each one had suffered the wearing anxiety of no wages when the family needed what they could earn, and yet they sang—they felt like children. No amount of money at the time could have bought them this happiness.
The sun poured down a glory of yellow light on the trees that seemed to have caught its color dashed with red flames. Across the field came one of the girls slowly—a girl who neverhad manifested any enthusiasm, except for dancing; who never gave expression to any emotion of feeling. It was thought impossible to move her. As she came nearer, it was seen that she was deeply stirred; her face was expressive. Putting her head against the arm of the chaperon, she whispered, rather than spoke: "I did not know trees were any color but green before." The tears were chasing each other down her cheeks, while her mouth was wreathed with smiles. The girl was over twenty. Had she been born in a family that would use the privileges of the various Fresh-Air organizations, she would have known more of the country. It was this year that she first saw the stars over the trees, and the moon at the full in the sky when it had a horizon. Obedience to her was not easy, but to her brother she gave it willingly; he had been her nurse in babyhood, her friend and companion in childhood, and was now her protector. In every plan of these young people he considered his sister first. If she had an escort, he invited some other girl to go with him; if not, he took his sister. The girl never manifested any interest in young men beyond their ability to dance well. She would find a dozen reasons for not dancing if she found herself on the floor with an awkward dancer.
This group of twenty-two young men and women,all from homes that would bar the door to charity, even when suffering, were fairly representative of the social standard of the better part of the wage-earning world of New York. Among them was the independent girl, the one who had no desire to be sought in marriage; she saw the worries of her sisters married to men having small and uncertain wages; saw the wearing side of motherhood rather than its joys. She skillfully kept her young men friends as friends, changing from one to the other as soon as she saw the line of friendship being crossed. The girl who never won attention till she wooed it was among them; the girl who was treated discourteously or neglected was one of them. The girl who was sought for exhibition because she dressed well, yet who never roused any deeper feeling, was there, for some of the men were very observant, and had standards of style for the girls they escorted.
THE FOREST OF THE TENEMENTS.THE FOREST OF THE TENEMENTS.
There was the young man who willfully played with a girl's feelings; the young man who openly exhibited the love he had awakened, but to which he did not respond; the girl whose adoration received indifferent treatment, yet who was never entirely cast aside by the man too selfish to marry. In that company there was one couple who were sentimental in their actions; they would sit and hold hands, if permitted, rather than dance. As soon as it was discovered that their actions were influencing others, they were given the choice to restrain the expression of their affection in public completely or resign. The lesson was effectual. When it was seen that one of the young men was very deeply interested in one of the young women, that she was only semi-conscious of his interest, yet enjoyed it, while not at all interested in him, just a few words, pointing out how unkind it was to permit his interest to develop and how unfair to let him spend money for her when she never meant to hold any relation but that of friend, changed her attitude toward him. She made the young man understand her position. More than that, she gave her lesson to the other girls, and escorts were changed frequently; groups arranged to go to the theater instead of couples. As one girl put it, "We don't want any nonsense." Yet several marriages have occurred among these members, the new homes making centers of social interest for the others. The babies are objects of deepest interest to all, and it is a lesson to see the ease and freedom with which even the young men will hold them. Much is said of the "little mothers," but the "little fathers" are as unselfish and devoted a part of the family life in the tenements as the little mothers. When a great, strong young man picks up a babywith the ease of a woman, is interested in its ills of the moment, one is grateful for the hours that, as a child, he spent as nurse; sees the beauty of strength and tenderness, and the humanizing effect of the maternal in the character of a boy whose character must be molded by the environment of a tenement-house region.
The rapidity with which a complete change of standard of manners can be attained amazed those who watched these young people. Outdoor life was possible to them only on Sunday. When first the trips on the railroad began, the noise, freedom, constant changing of seats mortified those who chaperoned the group. The journeys began in the spring. One Sunday evening in November, when returning from a nutting party, a group of young people entered the car laughing, pushing, slapping one another. The young men and women who had been going to the country almost every Sunday for the summer looked in amazement at one another, and with very evident disapproval at the new group. Yet they had offended, if offense can be committed in perfect innocence, in just that way many times a few months before. It is this adaptability, this quickness of comprehension of the little things, that give the outward stamp, that make the American wage-earningyoung people so intensely interesting, so wonderful in social achievement.
These young people were all Americans, of Christian parentage, as the word means, not Hebrews. The young women worked in shops with girls of Hebrew parentage. There were deep race antagonisms, due to many causes, but principally to the willingness of the Hebrews to accept any wages and work anywhere and any number of hours. These American girls grew to have the deepest sympathy with the girls of Hebrew birth when they found that many Hebrew parents coerced, while all regulated, the marriage of their daughters. That parents would dare to assume such authority in so personal a matter as marriage aroused the most extravagant terms of condemnation. One listening could well believe the hopelessness of trying to make one of these girls marry against her will.
No greater contrast could be conceived than the entire independence of these girls in their social relations, which they did not view as a privilege but considered a right. Beyond the fact that some of them must be at home at ten or half-past, there was no law but their own will. This freedom is one of the most serious influences in the life of working girls in New York. Were it notfor their common sense and the knowledge of life thrust on them when children, the effect would be most disastrous for the country. As it is, in certain ways young men and women retain the frankness of childhood in their intercourse. One realizes what perfect equality between the sexes is when mingling freely with them. Doubtless this comes from playing in the street together from earliest childhood, with no favors asked or conceded because one is a girl, and the impossibility of privacy. This last is the saddest fact in the life of tenement-house children.
At the lower rounds of the social ladder in the wage-earning world the mother and baby are inseparable, if the mother does not drink. Night and day the baby is cared for, often in hopeless ignorance, but cared for. Often everything else is neglected. When the baby sleeps, the mother is too tired to work, too indifferent. When awake, the baby insists on being held. One is frequently reminded of the story of the woman whose moan when her baby died was: "What excuse can I give John now?" Yet the day that baby is able to walk alone on the street the mother loosens her hold. The baby finds its freedom limited only by its ability to remain upright, and to return to its home for meals and at night. "Throw me the key and a piece of bread," is often the extent of itsdemands from the sidewalk. True, the mother knows every woman in the block will be, in an emergency, a mother. The child learns to care for itself; it makes less and less demands on the mother, who may even now have another baby compelling all her thought and time. Above this scale, where home-making assumes importance, the child remains longer under the mother's care; is watched when on the street by glances from the window; is sent to school, and some oversight maintained over its school life; but the wage-earning period means emancipation from oversight often even at this level. Hundreds of girls start out and find work for the first time without any evident responsibility on the part of even good mothers. No amount of familiarity with this exercise of freedom deadens the horror of it to the outsider. Women, mothers of attractive daughters, will not know the street on which the daughters work. After one of the most disastrous fires in New York, in which many working girls perished, four mothers notified the police the next day that their daughters had disappeared. It was the failure to trace the girls and the advertising of their disappearance that led, through companions who had escaped from the building, to the awful conclusion that these four had perished in the flames.
Sometimes it would be difficult for a mother to go to the place where the daughter finds employment; but here, as in everything else in life, that which is deemed the more important receives attention. Perhaps it is the habit of trust, or indifference, that governs mothers' activities.
A girl will make intimate friendships unhindered, unguided by mothers who act up to the measure of their comprehension of the duties of a mother. Girls are admitted to the homes who are unknown outside of the workshop; they work with the daughter; no other background is known. The mother knows that other mothers are accepting her daughters on the same basis of knowledge. For their young men friends there may be, but as frequently there will not be, any greater sense of responsibility than for the girl friends. In homes where the income would seem to demand a sense of social responsibility it is found wanting, and young people come and go unhindered. If there are two or more young wage-earners in the family, their conversation may bring knowledge of what they are doing, where they are going. But they also make compacts at concealments of disobedience where there are laws to be obeyed.
THE CHILDREN'S PLAYGROUND.THE CHILDREN'S PLAYGROUND.
The world has been shocked by the tragedies of death and disgrace that came to the homes of two young working girls within the past year. In each case the father and mother had gone to bed with the daughters out in the night, where they did not know; one a girl of eighteen, the other less. The "cadet" system would never exist were the parents of every girl alert to train and guard her the more closely because she was a working girl.
Until by some direct process the control of daughters and of sons is made desirable, and then natural in the wage-earners' homes, the problem of family life in the tenements will remain unsolved. It is a question sometimes whether, and sometimes it is very evident, that by the giving up of wages to the parents the freedom of the workers, even though but children, from obedience and parental oversight is purchased.
Those who know working girls know how high is the average of morality. Years will go by in intimate relations with the same group of girls and no tragedy will mar it; no echo of tragedy among their friends. The hardness with which even the suggestion of looseness is treated in any group of working girls is simply an expression of self-preservation. A group of sixty girls, earning the lowest wages and living under the worst conditions, were watched five years and one girl fell. As one goes over her history from birth, anyother result would seem a miracle. A girl arrested gave the first name and address of one of the girls in this factory. The case was reported in the papers. By an unfortunate circumstance, the working girl living at that number was away from the factory two days at this time. When she learned of the connection that had been made because of the chance use of her Christian name and her address, she told a lie as to where she was at the time of that arrest. The other girls struck until she was discharged. The girl was innocent of everything but the lie; investigation proved this. The girls would not recede from their position; work had to be found for the girl elsewhere. She was publicly marked. They could not convince everybody of her innocence; lots of people believed the story, and they would not work with her; go back and forth with her.
A room was hired as a lunch-room for these girls. They brought their own lunches and paid a small amount of dues, which were used to pay for tea served daily. The projectors of this little enterprise were girls of wealth and social position; three were at the lunch-room every day. By representing themselves as friends of the projectors to the caretaker, two representatives of a "yellow journal" gained access to the room. One, a woman, engaged the caretaker in conversation forsome time in the hall, getting all the information she could give her. The Sunday edition of that paper contained an illustration of the room filled with wretched-looking girls, while young women holding up trailing skirts were passing cups. The text was as far from the truth as the picture. The working girls absolutely refused to go to the lunch-room again. At last they agreed that if the paper would publish a true account—that they provided their own lunches and paid dues, and waited on themselves—they would go back. The paper refused. Two of those girls would never enter the rooms again.
The working girl has suffered quite as much at the hands of yellow journalism as the woman of wealth and social position. Not one of these girls went to school until she was fourteen; nor during any year since she began working had she earned on an average more than $3.50 per week. Yet they had social standards to maintain, and compelled recognition of them by those who opened opportunities to them.
The inspiring fact remains that the standard of home life in ethics, as in necessities, is raising. Without doubt much of this is due to the improvement in the class of readers used in our public schools. They are not perfect in the matter of selection, but they carry messages to the hearts, aswell as the heads, of the children, few of whom would pass an examination on their contents. Even the primary grades introduce the children to the best thoughts of all time, and the crumbs, at least, are carried to the homes.
The girls who belong to the working-girls' club carry with them everywhere the influence that is molding their characters to a brighter type of American womanhood. The Settlements soon become centers of education through the social activities they make possible to the people. They surpass the clubs in this, that boys and girls, young men and women, each have in them the center that makes possible social occasions that are within their means and under rightful guides; together men and women are trained socially. The Settlements have been in existence long enough to have the children that were the first friends of the Residents now the fathers and mothers of children. The years of contact show results in the homes established, in the kind of care and the ambitions held for the children still babies. Wages have not greatly changed from those earned by the fathers of these new home-makers; but money represents different values. The kindergarten is the first thing demanded for their children, and the seeds sown in the minds of theseyoung mothers bear fruit one hundred-fold because it is prepared.
The kindergarten mother clubs have also borne fruit in the homes where even the youngest child has gone beyond the kindergarten's age. These mothers learn for the first time the need of sympathy; of living with the children through every period of growth; of sharing and of making together a home. The result is, the homes gain in moral fiber and moral purpose. The schools and the homes are brought into close relation through these beginnings, and the child finds its interests a unit, and home the place where its whole good is of vital importance. The mother establishes the home often on the basis of contrast. "It shall not be what mine was; their lives shall not be what mine was when I was a child."
The churches, many of them, provide for the social life of their people; these social activities must be of a character that wins those who have the least to contend with in themselves, who find a pleasure and inspiration in religious life, which often is far more a matter of temperament than of spiritual development.
One sees the highest expression of spiritual development in lives apart from the Church as well as in the Church. This it is that develops a feeling of reverence for any movement having for itsobject the bettering of the social life of the people. One learns that every vulgarity that becomes obnoxious; every freedom that is brought within the bounds of restraint by new standards of education and refinement; every influence set in motion because of the spiritual perception of the answer to the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" means spiritual life growing toward that of the Master of time, whose laws are but two for the guiding of men, "Love the Lord thy God," "Thy neighbor as thyself;" and these make neither cross nor steeple necessary, for they may be obeyed in the heart and guide the life wherever it is lived.
LIBRARY DAY AT THE COLLEGE SETTLEMENT.LIBRARY DAY AT THE COLLEGE SETTLEMENT.
The women of education who attempted to make the conditions of working-men's families better, found their own education advanced, their values of essentials greatly modified in some respects, greatly enlarged in others. This was due to the bravery, the unselfishness, the contradictions of character forced on their attention through the natural, familiar intercourse made possible through neighborhood and club relations.
Probably the most astonishing experience in working-girls' club life is the revelation of the entire lack of self-consciousness on the part of working girls as to anything remarkable in their giving up wages not only week after week, but year after year, for the benefit of their families. The closer one gets to the poorest paid of the working girls, the more common is this unconscious unselfishness. In fact, the girl at this level who would attempt to hold or even to introduce a business relation in her family relation, would find herself an object of contempt, even when the personal habits of those who controlled the use ofthe money she earned were of such a character as to certainly mean waste of the money, perhaps worse.
However one's judgment may at times condemn this unselfishness and recognize in it a positive evil, one's heart is thrilled by the spirit of loyalty and devotion of which it is the evidence. Three sisters belonged to a working-girls' club. They were all employed in one establishment and earned good wages, yet they never had clothes that made them even comfortable. It was a mystery. They did not belong to the race which too frequently make thrift a vice, but were descendants of one the world counts thriftless. The months passed on. One of the sisters became indispensable to the club. She had the rarest tact, while straightforward and frank. When the second winter came, the pressure of life on these girls was very evident. How to relieve it, how even to approach the subject without appearing intrusive and meddlesome, was the wearing problem of the club directors. After the holidays the influence of one of the directors was asked by one of the sisters in behalf of a brother. Then the cause of the pressure was unconsciously revealed. There were five brothers and a father in the family.
The story unfolded. For years these three girls had supported the family; the six men had alwaysbeen the victims of cruel "bosses." Worthy, industrious, anxious to work, looking for work all the time, they never succeeded in finding work under conditions that made it possible for them to continue. The years of self-sacrifice had not shaken the faith of these sisters in the smallest degree. "What would happen if your foreman would become arbitrary and cross?" was asked. The reply revealed the whole conception of woman's relation to life as they held it. "It's different with women; they have to bear things."
Another year passed without any change, except that the sisters grew old faster than they should. A quiet, determined effort was made to influence these girls to pay board to their mother instead of giving all their wages. They listened to the argument that as long as they continued their present system the brothers would not work steadily. The sisters listened, but the system did not change. Every penny was handed to the mother for disbursement.
One morning in the early spring, three years after these girls had joined the club, word came that the sister who had grown dear to the club directors, to every member of the club, was dead. She had dropped to the floor at her bench the day before, and died in the night. "Greater love hath no man than this,that a man lay down his life for his friends." The sacrifice was complete. Standing in the room of death with the six able-bodied men for whom this girl had given up her life, the sacrifice seemed barren, for its fruits had been garnered in her own character and had gone out of this life.
A year later the mother sent for one of the directors of the club to have her plead with the sisters remaining that they would give her their wages as formerly. "They only pay board now; they refuse to do anything for the poor boys. 'Twas a bad day when —— died. Shure, she gave me every cent. Not one did she keep back. Ever since she died, the girls just pay board, not a cent more. See how comfortable they are. They bought waterproofs, both of them, last week, and Jim has no overcoat. —— would have bought him an overcoat."
"Yes, doubtless she would. I remember the winter before she died she wore a spring jacket all winter, and that her shoes had been broken for weeks before she died." "Shure, I know." Tears fell from the woman's eyes, and her face bore every evidence of sorrow. "The boys could not get work that winter. God knows they tried. They had to have clothes, and —— was a good daughter. 'Twas a bad day for me when she died." The mother had not the slightest conceptionof the sacrifice her daughter had made—a sacrifice that had cost her her life. Her thought was for her sons; their comforts were to be secured through the daughters, who were a secondary consideration.
When her visitor protested against the sisters working to support the brothers in idleness, the mother was indignant. When she tried to show the woman that if the boys were forced by hunger and cold to go to work it would be their moral salvation, the mother insisted that they did try to get work, but that it was their "fate" to have unreasonable "bosses," who made it impossible for them to work under them.
"Do you think the girls always work under conditions that are easy?"
"No; but it is easier for a woman to stand a hard 'boss,'" was the mother's answer, without any expression of sympathy. Again she urged that the visitor use her influence with the two sisters for them to go back to their old method of giving the mother their wages. When the visitor refused, the amazement of the woman at her refusal was pathetic. When the visitor confessed that she was largely responsible for the change in the girls' use of their wages, the mother's indignation rose to the point of abuse. That her boys were robbed was the idea fastened in her mind.That the club was the enemy of that home was the mother's conviction.
The mental attitude of this mother is by no means unusual. It is a common thing to find mothers who insist on controlling the wages of daughters who make no exactions in regard to the wages of sons. The effect is to lessen the self-respect of the girls and the sense of personal responsibility of the boys. In the family referred to the experiment of paying board to the mother was watched carefully. It was a success. The effect on the girls was positive. They developed a sense of personal responsibility; they grew more dignified and more reliable; above all, they developed self-respect. The fight was a hard one, but the moral victory was won. The brothers either found work under men who were fair, or they learned to endure control and discipline under a "boss," which was probably what they needed. The girls grew to have a care for their father's and mother's appearance and bought them clothes. Never as long as the mother lived did her feeling of her resentment against working-girls' clubs die out.
After her death, the father and brothers agreed to pay one of the sisters so much each week if she would stay home and keep the house. The sister did it, though it meant hours of loneliness, and,from her point of view, dependence. She had taken courses in cooking and sewing in the club; she had listened to talks on sanitation and hygiene; she had learned the value of money through the management of her own wages. She created for that family a far better home than it had ever known under the shiftless, thriftless management of an undisciplined mother.
The daughter was able to pay more rent from the money given to support the house, and the pride and self-respect of the family were greatly increased by the possession of a parlor, which was furnished on the installment plan out of the weekly sum paid to the sister. The home became a social center for the friends. The boys bring even their girl friends to their home, because it possesses more attractions than any other place to which they have access. A banjo lies on top of a piano—hired—and two of the boys take music lessons. In a family of seven wage-earners, even though the wages of each may be small, the combined income is large in proportion to the standards of outlay, and secures more than comfort, if rightly managed.
In this family a home maintained at a social level is of greater importance than clothes, and all work to keep it. Sacrifices are made to buy things for the home by every member of the family.The sisters are to these brothers the finest type of women, and no girl whom they meet quite comes to their level. The sisters will never marry. The home, the father and brothers fill their cup of interest. There is still a latent suspicion that men are non-dependable, and they must be in a position to meet emergencies; the unjust "boss" may appear at any time, and they may be needed. Their brothers are a trust and must be guarded.
A visit was made to a home in which a girl of sixteen was dying of tuberculosis. The plaint of the mother, even in the presence of the girl, was, "She was such a good child. She always brought home her envelope unopened." To the visitor this was at the time incomprehensible, as the advantages of the envelope to her were two-fold, that it could be opened as well as closed. The child had worked nearly three years, had been paid her wages in a sealed envelope, which she always gave to her mother as she received it. This is the measure of goodness for husband and child in thousands of working-men's homes. This mother was unconsciously brutal. Whether from lack of sensitiveness, or because of a life spent in fighting just homelessness and hunger, to the very last hour of her child's life her moan was, "What will I do without her wages?"
Not once did that little girl hear her mother give expression to any sense of personal loss for her companionship. The child herself became weighed down with the sense of responsibility, and resented the lack of strength because it added to her mother's burdens. This was her regret, the only thing she mentioned: "I wish I could have helped mother till the others grew up. I've cost such a lot being sick so long and not earning anything." That was her estimate of life at sixteen.
A son went wrong in that family, and as the time approached for his return home, the mother moved, lest he should be annoyed by questions and comments on his absence by neighbors. No power could be brought to bear on that mother to make her move that the daughter might sleep in a room having an outside window. One influence came within the range of her experience, the other was beyond her comprehension, and her daughter died in an absolutely dark, unventilated bedroom, in which she had slept eight years.
She was a dainty girl, in spite of the bad taste with which she dressed, this second victim. She floated, rather than walked, and her cheeks were like carnations. The girls in the club all liked her, and their young men friends at the receptions showed at once how attractive they found thisgirl. She was reticent as to her affairs, except in the question of work. When out of work, she did not hesitate to speak of it and ask to be remembered if any of the club members knew where she could get work. At last she came quietly one morning to the director and said the doctor told her she must stop working for three months. The expression in her eyes filled the listener with fear. In a voice that trembled, she said: "I am the only one working. Mother has a baby and cannot work, and—and"—her voice lowered and her eyes fell—"my father will not be home for three months from last Monday. He got into trouble. He would not if he had been sober," she added, in proud defence. Two months later the end was near, and the girl knew it. All that could be done under the conditions had been done. It was little, for an unreasonable, drunken mother had to be reckoned with all the time. She would stand railing against the girl for not going to work when the girl could not walk across the floor for lack of strength. The girl was under eighteen, and her mother was the controlling power in her life.
One of the young men who had been frequently a guest at the club receptions worked in an office near the girl's home. He passed one day as she sat by the window, and she saw him. "Ifhe knew where I lived, he'd come in and see me," she said with a smile, full of friendship as the young man turned down the street. "I'll run after him. I know he would like to see you. He asked about you at the club last night." She clutched convulsively at her visitor's hand, saying: "Oh, don't! I wouldn't for the world have him see this place." She closed her eyes, after a searching glance about the room. Of course, the mother broke out in wailing about how hard she tried to do for the children and how ungrateful they were—ashamed of their home.
The girl gathered her strength and sat up, her eyes blazing with indignation. "Mamma, I'm dying. I'll not be here another week. There are three more girls; I don't want them to live through what I have." Slowly, solemnly, she continued: "You have not been good. Papa earned good wages, enough to keep us all comfortable; you know what you did with the money. He stopped giving it to you, and you got what you wanted on credit. You kept that up. You know what happened to him. I went to work. You know what you did with my money. I could not keep it from you even when I knew the little ones were hungry, for you beat me and took it, unless I had spent it for groceries and meat and coal before I came home pay-day. I heard what thedoctor said, that I was dying because I have not had food and have to sleep in that hole, or holes like it." She pointed to the horrible bedroom. "I am dying. You are planning with the insurance money to have a big funeral. Have your own friends, but not one of the girls from the club or their friends, even when I am dead. I don't want them to come here. Promise me," she panted to her visitor, "that you will not let them come." The promise was given.
The mother was shrieking, whether from grief, or rage, or remorse the visitor could not determine. That night death came.
The girl was buried from the church she attended. When the club members were requested not to go to the house, there was scarcely concealed indignation. "Did she ever ask you to call on her when she was well?" There was no assent. "Have you any right to intrude there when she is silent? The church is open to all." No comment was made. At the church early in the morning the young men and women friends met. The mother could not even that morning hold herself in control. The girl's secret was out, and a great sympathy was added to the love her friends bore her. Her memory was an incense because of what her life must have been. Her unconscious unselfishness, her devotion to her little brothers and sisters, was revealed to them when they saw her mother. Good fathers and mothers found new expressions of affection for awhile at least, while the sharpness of contrast stood out between the dead girl's parents and their own, her life and theirs.
A STREET ON THE EAST SIDE.A STREET ON THE EAST SIDE.
The girl who presents the most difficult problem in club life is the one whose social impulses are dominant. Noise, activity, excitement, seem inseparable from her presence. This type of girl arouses enthusiastic friends. She leads because she is daring; because she does not in any experience question results. One such girl had been studied for months. There was a superficial response to the efforts to win her regard, but the response was too transparent not to be understood. The girl would speak to any man who looked at her. One day she was playing "tag" with the other girls in front of the factory where she worked. A rag-picker pushing a cart made some remark as he passed. The girl, Molly, gave a spring and alighted on the man's shoulders like a cat. She clung there. He began to run, but he could not throw her off. She twined her fingers in his hair, made him turn back and carry her to the place where her shrieking, laughing companions stood. She sprang off. Still holding the man, she made him get down on his knees onthe curb to the girls and apologize. Like a bird she flew to the place where he had dropped his push-cart, and, pumping the handle up and down to make the bells jingle, she brought it back to the man, still exhausted by his unwonted exertions, and with a mocking bow placed the handle of the cart in his hand. Then she stood up straight and ordered him to move on, adding: "If you ever show your nose around here again, you'll get more than you got this time." The man ran as if for his life.
Molly then turned and saw the friend whom she had promised she would be more quiet on the street. Her face crimsoned as she came toward her. "I could not help it. You don't know what he said. He won't never speak to another girl minding her own business as he spoke to us. I won't tell you what he said; it was too bad." The girl was about seventeen years old. She had cut off her hair, and it was bleached. She wore the gayest hats, which only served to emphasize the poverty and shabbiness of the rest of her clothes. One day she passed her friend's house without a jacket. She ran, holding her hands under her arms. Her jacket had been bought with money earned by working overtime, a result secured by the most persistent effort and argument.
Now the jacket was gone, and the slack season coming. As five o'clock approached, the girl's self-appointed guardian took her station at the window to watch for the girl on her way home. She came skipping along, slapping her arms to keep warm. She entered the house reluctantly in response to the call, "Where is your jacket, Molly?"
"I ain't cold. I ain't a bit cold."
"Where is your jacket?"
"Really and truly, I ain't cold. I'm thin, but I don't feel the cold as much as other girls. I ain't a mite cold."
It was impossible for the girl to stand still. She was shivering with cold, and her teeth, which were beautiful, were chattering. After a time the explanation was given.
There were five in family. The girl's mother, a stepfather about fifteen years younger than the mother, a brother one year younger than the girl, and a feeble-minded sister of fourteen. The girl was the only regular wage-earner in the family. The brother was a worthless fellow, who bore every evidence of degeneracy and rarely worked. The stepfather drank, and worked only occasionally. Molly earned six dollars a week, except in the slack seasons, two a year, when she earned about three dollars a week for four weekseach time. She began working when she was fourteen, and had never kept back one penny of her wages. Her mother had bought her new hats, but in all her life no other new garment except the jacket had ever been bought for her. She never asked any questions about the money, but she supposed the rent was paid. When she reached home the night before everything was on the sidewalk, and her feeble-minded sister was watching them. The jacket was the only thing owned on which money could be raised; it was pawned. "Molly, may I call on your mother?" A reluctant consent was given.
The home now was in a rear basement, the ceiling just above the level of the yard. The mother and husband occupied the bedroom; Molly and her sister slept on a narrow lounge covered with Brussels carpet, every spring broken. It was a series of humps. It was impossible to sit on it. In reply to a question, the mother acknowledged that no provision was made to make it more comfortable. The brother slept on the floor. The rooms were dirty and overcrowded. Food was of necessity poor, and because of the mother's indifference and ignorance, was poorer than it need have been.
This was what Molly received for six dollars a week. The moment the mother knew who thevisitor was, she began abusing the girl. One special cause of offense was the keeping back of overtime money to buy a new jacket. She evidently imagined that she did not get all the girl's money every week. When it was pointed out to her that the new jacket had paid half a month's rent, she refused to be mollified, because the money paid for it would have paid the rent for a month and a half. Of course, this extra money would have gone like the regular wages if it had been given to the woman.
The walls were covered with pretty advertising cards and pictures cut from papers. Not a vulgar nor ugly picture was on the walls. "Who put up those pictures?" "Molly. Shure, that's all she's good for when she's home, a-cutting and putting up these things." This was one more charge against the girl. Evidently the girl gave her wages, and gave them willingly; but that ended her interest in her home and measured the mother's in her.
It was decided to move the family into one of the model tenements and furnish a room for the girl and her sister, paying the difference in rent for one year, to see what the result would be in health and morals in that family. When the proposition was made one evening to Molly, her face lighted and she emitted a sigh of perfect consent.But the light died out, and an expression of almost self-pity supplanted it.
"No, I must not let you do it. It would be lovely to have a room for Katie and me alone. I must not let you do it." She was silent for some minutes; then, with eyes cast down, she said in a quiet voice that indicated that persuasion was useless: "I know them houses. They're awful nice. I'd like to live in them. They're awful particular. They won't let no noisy people in. They make them move right out." Then slowly, with burning cheeks, she said in barely distinct tones: "Mamma is noisy sometimes, and when she's noisy she gets into fights with people. There ain't no use of moving in there; they'd not let us stay. Then, Billy"—the stepfather—"and I fight. I never speaks to him, excepts when he speaks ugly to Katie or mamma. He's drunk a lot now, most all the time, and then he's ugly to them. He ain't to me, 'cos he knows I'd break his head; but he is to them, and then I has to shut him up. I ain't spoke to him since he struck mamma, just after they was married."
"But your wages give him a home and food."
"Yes, I know it, but I can't help that, 'cos he's married to mamma and must be where she is." There was silence again, and then the girl continued: "Mamma didn't do it so much till she marriedhim; she's worse now. I wish I was dead;" and the head of many shades was buried with the limp, "frowzled" feathers in the sofa cushion. "No, I can earn enough to keep them where they are. I must not move; but it would be lovely," she added with a sob.
A couple of weeks later she came in the evening. It was raining hard. After a moment's silence, she announced, with shining face: "We have the loveliest baby at our house, born last night week. I wanted to tell you before, but I had to do the work night and morning. He's lovely." She fussed at her pocket and brought out a pair of baby shoes of worsted. "I got them with some money I earned overtime. You say I ought to get what I want with that money." The eyes of the hostess followed the lines of Molly's dress to her feet. Her swollen, purple foot was seen through the broken upper of her shoe. Molly was looking with pride and love at the tiny shoes on her knee. "I named the baby Willie, and I'm his godmother," she added with pride, without the slightest conception of the relation between "Billy" and "Willie."
"Billy? Oh, he's drunk; been drunk a week. I ain't let him in yet; I'm goin' to wait until the baby's bigger and mamma's up. She'll let him in," she added, with disgust.
Matters grew worse with the advent of the new baby, for Molly had to fight with her mother to get it cared for. At last it died, to Molly's pathetic grief. The mother had consented to Katie's removal to an institution, where she could receive care and training. Molly was persuaded she owed a duty to herself. No impression was made until her mother had been arrested twice. Then Molly consented to leave home. It was deemed best that she should contribute part of the rent to insure her mother a home and to maintain a natural human tie. Molly did thisfor three years. Then she married a man controlling a good business. Molly is a quiet, devoted wife. She married a man old enough to be her father. When the wisdom of this was questioned, she said, with emphasis and a nod of her curly head: "No young man for me, thank you. Look at Billy!"
It was Friday morning—a warm, sultry morning in August. The bell rang. A mother in black and a young daughter of eighteen were in the reception-room. The daughter had evidently been crying. "I've come to tell yer that Annie can't go to the country to-morrow. She's sick'm. She's cried all night. Her brother was discharged'm. He do be havin' a bad man for a 'boss.' He's discharged'm, and Annie can't go to the country with the girls to-morrow. I can't spare her wages. It's all I got. Shure, if I could get work in washin', or anything to do, I'd do it, but I can't'm. I'll look all the week; and the boy'll get somethin', perhaps. She can't go this week; will yer let her go next? Shure, the rent is due, and her wages is all I got for three of us. Yer can go to work to-day, even if it be a bit late, and yer can go next week to the country."