The Leaven in a Great City Part 10

"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. G.o.d 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 conception of 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 att.i.tude 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 s.h.i.+ftless, 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 companions.h.i.+p. 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 this girl. 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 pa.s.sed one day as she sat by the window, and she saw him. "If he knew where I lived, he'd come in and see me," she said with a smile, full of friends.h.i.+p 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 the doctor 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 a.s.sent. "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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pus.h.i.+ng a cart made some remark as he pa.s.sed. 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 on the 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+vering 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 weeks each 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 p.a.w.ned. "Molly, may I call on your mother?" A reluctant consent was given.

The home now was in a rear bas.e.m.e.nt, 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 the visitor 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 married him; 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 cus.h.i.+on. "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 s.h.i.+ning 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 G.o.dmother," 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 inst.i.tution, 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 this _for 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 was.h.i.+n', 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A COOKING CLa.s.s OF MOTHERS AND CHILDREN.]

"Oh, mamma! the girls talk nothing but country. I can't go to-day," was the sobbing response.

The girl did not go that summer. There was no room for her until September.

By that time the work at the factory had increased and not one girl could be spared. Patiently Annie commented: "It wouldn't be any good if they could spare me. My brother is out of work yet. He's awfully unlucky."

The quiet heroism of thousands of working girls can be appreciated only by those who become familiar with their lives in the natural intercourse of club life. There is, of course, the other type of girl--the girl who insists on spending the major portion, if not all, of her wages for clothes; who a.s.sumes no responsibility for the family, and who has conceded to her the right to spend her money for clothes. She would make life most uncomfortable if she were compelled to share what she earned, even when the family live under conditions that make the home merely a place of shelter--conditions that make even decency impossible. The fathers and mothers seemingly have no rights that this type of girl feels she is bound to respect. When such girls marry, the mothers will do the was.h.i.+ng for their daughters, hold the menial relation, and neither mother nor daughter questions the justice of the relation. Sometimes the daughter will pay the mother for doing the was.h.i.+ng, "to," as she expresses it, "help her mother out." Such families usually cannot be helped through any influence but the evolution that comes through environment and neighborhood development.

There is a superficial difference in the social development of such parents and children. The parents concede the higher position to their children, and the children take it as a matter of right.

The wages of skilled workmen enable them to keep their children in school until they are sixteen or seventeen years old, if the children will stay.

These fathers can support their families, but not dress them as they desire. The girls go to work for the sole purpose of dressing better than their fathers could dress them. This indulgence creates false standards, and is a serious blot on the American working-man's life. It prevents marriage. Both young men and young women understand that the wages of one cannot buy luxuries for two that the wages used for one bought. The army of clerks on small salaries increase yearly. This cla.s.s, through a.s.sociation, develop tastes and standards of living that make impossible the establishment of homes on their incomes and at the same time the continued indulgence of developed tastes. No type of family develops less that adds to the wealth and attainment of the country than this type. The children are selfish; they marry; they discover that the wages that bought clothes to suit the extravagance of one is wholly inadequate to support a family.

Discouragement, friction, ennui follow, and life becomes a grind, without hope, without inspiration. The second family slips backward, and it is but two generations from s.h.i.+rt sleeves to s.h.i.+rt sleeves, with this difference, that the arms covered by the s.h.i.+rt sleeves of the third generation lack the muscles of the first, as the spirit lacks its moral fiber. It is this type of family that keeps alive the most vexing of social problems. The skilled working-man's family, the family of the small salaried men, present the most difficult problems not only in the use of money, but the use of time.

Their daughters are often far more helpless than the daughters of men of wealth. During their school days, except in the exceptional home, they are not trained to do housework; do not learn to sew. As soon as school days end, office or store work begins, and then there is no time to learn the household arts. If in these homes the money-saving value of time were taught, independence and freedom impossible in wage-earning would be secured; the standards of life would be the essentials, not the non-essentials, that so often rob life of what is best and most valuable.