The Leaven in a Great City Part 8

This little girl during this period of struggle with this woman was met one Sunday afternoon. She carried a doll to which she was devoted, and for which she made a cloak that Sunday morning. "Isn't she pretty?" she said, holding up the doll. "I often wish I could see her when I'm working." What a combination of child and woman! As the years have pa.s.sed, this little girl has paid the penalty of shop life. She has grown hard, aggressive, self-a.s.sertive, untruthful. If only her environment could have been different, she would have made a magnificent woman. The world of struggle has been too much for her; it has strangled the spirit of helpfulness.

The lessons of that winter have been well learned. Every mother in the club wants a trade for her child; something learned that has in it wage-earning promise because the worker has special knowledge.

The time came when it was possible to turn the attention of these mothers to the administration of those city departments that make the environment of their homes. The streets naturally claimed first attention. They learned to take the numbers of the street sweepers who failed to do their work; to take the numbers of the carts improperly and carelessly filled, and report them at the club meeting. Leaking roofs, broken stairways, unlighted halls, contagious diseases were reported, and conditions in the stores and factories where their daughters worked.

The criminality of concealing dangers that threatened many to protect one was comprehended. The club motto became "A helping hand to all."

The club members felt that it was possible for them to give special help to little children. In a thousand ways the women in the house of many families find the opportunity to help children; often through the children they helped the mothers. Sometimes through personal influence they secured the regular attendance of children at school; sometimes it meant calling in the aid of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to secure the rights of children, to protect them from evils in their own homes.

One day a wealthy woman who had lost a little girl told the president of this club this incident, which, she said, changed the course of her life.

For months she had shut out the world. G.o.d and man were cruel. Nothing interested her; life was empty. She sat by the window in her home one November afternoon. It was drizzling and blowing. A little girl without hat or coat stood s.h.i.+vering and crying against the church railing opposite. As she watched the child her mind reverted to the clothes she handled so constantly, because they had been worn by her child. She sent for the little stranger, and when she went on the street again she was warm, tidy and comfortable. Then came the thought, "G.o.d never meant a woman should be a mother just to one little girl. She must be a mother to every child who needs her." From that day this woman has given her life and service to children. The story was told to the club.

One of the members, after the meeting had adjourned and while the refreshments were being served, was overheard saying: "Why, certainly it would change everything if every woman would live in that way. Think how many times you could save children, how many times you could help them, if you were their mother just for the time they needed you--often only a few minutes."

Months after a member reported: "Well, I don't know what you'll all think when I tell you what I did last week. I've been bothered because such a nice-looking little girl came every morning about school time and went upstairs in the house opposite. She carried a lunch-box and books. I would see her with a baby at the window, and see her in the morning run on errands. At three o'clock she went away in the direction from which she came. That child is playing 'hookey.' That woman is to blame, I said to myself. One morning last week I saw the child go to the corner grocery. I went after her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AT THE SETTLEMENT--A STORMY DAY.]

"'Where you live, little girl?' I asked. She grew red and hung her head, and tried to get out of the store. I stand in front of her. 'No, you must not be afraid of me. I have little girls. I love all little girls. Where is your mother? Child, you deceive her. She thinks you are in school, and you play "hookey."' The child ran out of the store, crying. I went right upstairs after her. I knock. The woman would not open the door. I knock louder, then she come. When she see me, she tried to close the door. I put my foot in the door and keep it open. I say, 'You are doing wrong. I belong to a club where every member is to be a mother to every child what needs her. If that little girl come here one more day, I follow her home and tell her mother. It be bad for you if any child come here so young as that child. It is against the law for such little children to work. That little girl is playing "hookey," and you make her. You do that any more, and I make a complaint against you to the Children's Society. Good-morning;' and I took out my foot, bowed and went downstairs. When I got home, that little girl is running down the street where she comes every morning. I never see her now, and that woman do her own errands and mind her own baby."

The members applauded. A child out of school is a child to be looked after.

It has been concluded by the members of this club that they can do their best missionary work in the houses where they live, by keeping their rooms and their children in the best possible condition; that every home, every child so cared for, is the best possible sermon preached, the purpose of which is to make life better.

The League for Political Education, the Woman's Auxiliary of the Civil Service Reform a.s.sociation, the City History Club have sent speakers to the club, some conducting courses of lectures. Even the a.s.sembly District work undertaken by the League for Political Education was attempted by the club, but did not succeed. It could hardly be expected that it would.

During all those years the members had been trained to self-government. All questions are decided by the majority. There came a time when the majority voted to leave the College Settlement. It was deplored by the projectors, but accepted. After a few weeks a small house was taken a couple of blocks from the East River. The house had a large yard, and by expending a small amount of money was made very attractive. The attempt was made to have the members of the club do neighborhood work. A very short trial proved this was impracticable. Two things were revealed: That the mother of a working-man's family has neither strength nor time to give away; that the very conditions of tenement-house neighborhoods require trained, impersonal workers. The women who gave time to the club work in the neighborhood neglected their homes and families. The few members who tried to do neighborhood work in the house used every advantage the club-house offered, which they controlled, to curry favor, to revenge slights, real or fancied, to themselves or their children. The best mothers made no attempt to do any neighborhood work. The house became a social center, an educational center.

But it was not a success until paid workers were put in charge of different departments, with a very few volunteer workers; and the most faithful of these were women of wealth.

It was hoped that uptown organizations would establish branches of their work in this house. Some did attempt it, but it failed for the reason that so many efforts to better the conditions of the tenement-house dwellers fail. Women lacking the right qualities volunteered, or the work was important when other things did not interfere. Clubs were established to which the organizers came when it was convenient. Again and again children connected with clubs waited until darkness came, but no "dear lady" whom they trusted appeared. In another case, numbers were the standard of success, and scores were crowded in where units should have been. All this forced the employment of paid workers, and centered the responsibility on one until the burden was too great to be borne.

Added to this, the principle of self-government had given a one-sided development to some of the members, and friction would develop when large questions were to be decided, an aggressive minority combating a conservative and less demonstrative majority.

The reform campaign of 1897 began. The picture of the candidate of the Citizens' Union hung in the window. The Citizens' Union used the house and yard for its lectures. When the campaign was ended, the friction developed to the unbearable point, and it seemed, in view of the dissension, best to disband the club. The club voted to keep together and return to the College Settlement, if the privilege could be secured. This was generously given, and the club unanimously voted to return, pledging the members to give all the aid possible to the Settlement work. Since 1898 the club has again been a part of the work at the Settlement.

For six years this club has had a country club-house--a large house, easy of access, in New Jersey, admirably adapted to the purposes of the club.

The house is surrounded by lawns and an apple orchard. Two kitchens make it possible for two families to occupy the house at the same time. The rent is paid and the house cleaned each spring. All other expenses, including car fares, are paid by the members of the club using the house. The plan is for each member to use half the house for two weeks. By a system of evolution and working of the law of natural selection, four families use the house at the same time. Mrs. A. invites Mrs. B. for the two weeks that she is ent.i.tled to half of the house; and Mrs. B., arranging her two weeks to follow Mrs. A., reciprocates by asking Mrs. A. to remain for her two weeks. Co-operative housekeeping has developed, as has the sharing in the care of the children. The barn, equipped for the children, has been an endless delight. Two members have in the past been debarred the use of the house. One because of the character of the men invited by the husband; one because of the language used to her children. Both were asked to resign from the club, or to make it inconvenient to use the club-house. One resigned. The average number of people using this club-house has been between four and five hundred each season. Sick children of neighbors have been taken up by the members and cared for during their whole vacation. On Sundays, friends, relatives and city neighbors are guests.

There has never been any supervision over the house, except that of the members. Each member leaves the part of the house she has used clean for the one coming after her. For several years the club paid part of two months' rent, raised through entertainments. One year the members made a donation of thirty dollars. Broken dishes are replaced, and the cost of repairing furniture broken is paid by the member using the furniture at the time. The large parlor is a club-room, and used by every member who goes up for a day. A closet is provided with dishes to be used when picnics are given by the members. The theory is that the grounds--four acres--can be used by the members at any time, but the families in the house must not be interfered with in any way.

The story of this club has been told at this length because it has proved what can be done in broadening the life of women of natural intelligence living under tenement-house conditions; how the family can have a common interest, to which each contributes, a center that can create social opportunity for the friends of every member and the members of every family.

This club has been able to do much to lighten the burdens in the time of financial crisis for people who could only have been helped through such a medium. It was the help of a friend always. For years it has been able to distribute Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners; but it grows more cautious every year, for it has made discoveries of the abuses of the Christmas dinner-giving. Through the children it has been possible to reach other children who needed Christmas cheer, but who would not take it from ever so kind-hearted a public.

The long years of working together has cemented friends.h.i.+ps that are the inheritances of the children, and sons and daughters have intermarried.

Baby after baby finds its G.o.dmother in the club.

There have been mortifying failures, but there have been positive successes in the eleven years. The club has proved conclusively that the working-men's wives can be determining factors in arousing and demanding better environment for their homes; that the wife and mother who keeps in touch with life commands greater influence in and outside her home, where all that she learns is used to make that home better; that she keeps her place in her family best when she makes herself the companion of her husband and children; when she, as far as she may, is herself the source of their social life, and contributes to their mental interests by sharing with them all the educational opportunity that life gives her.

CHAPTER VII.

WITHIN THE WALLS OF HOME.

One day a group of unusually intelligent wives of working men were driving through Central Park in a Park carriage. All were mothers, some of grown children, yet it was the first time that twelve of the twenty (all but two born in New York) had seen Central Park. Coming back on the east drive, the closed houses on Fifth Avenue attracted their attention. Various suggestions were made as to what use these houses could be put in the summer, when one woman, slight, delicate and extremely nervous, said: "I don't want anything in those houses but the room, just the room. I've never had all the room I want. I would have if I lived in them." After a moment she continued: "The reason we don't love each other as we should is because we don't have room; we crowd each other. All the time I lived in my father's home I was crowded. How we used to fight! Fight in the night, as well as the day, just because we did not have room. The beds were so crowded that one of the young ones had to sleep across the foot. The big ones would keep their feet up while they were awake, but when they went to sleep they would stretch out and kick the one across the foot. When I was so little that I slept that way, I used to lie awake in terror expecting the kick, and how I scratched when it came! I know we would have loved each other much more if we could have had room to grow up in, as the children in those houses do. And my mother! She didn't have a room to herself when she had the sickness that killed her."

[Ill.u.s.tration: YARD DAY AT THE SETTLEMENT.]

It was pathetic to hear the revelations of the little miseries of childhood due to lack of room in the home. "My mother used to drive us out of the house to get a chance to sweep it," said another mother of children. "I remember lots of times standing down at the hall door, s.h.i.+vering, waiting for her to get through. I would go into the neighbors' rooms, but often they had got rid of their own children for the reason my mother had of hers."

"I tell you what used to make me mad; it was to have to wait for the others to get through eating," said another. "When I hire a place I always look first to see if the kitchen is big enough to pull the table from the wall and sit about it. I don't think I ever had any hot dinner when I was little, and it used to make me mad. When I had three children I moved just to get a large kitchen; it ain't near so nice a place, but the kitchen is big." There was not a woman there who did not have a grievance against her childhood because there was not room. One of them with crimson cheeks told how she remembered the sense of comfort that came to her after the death of an older sister because she had a bed to herself; she said it was a long time before she knew the cause, for she missed her sister's companions.h.i.+p, but she was more comfortable; she enjoyed having the five nails at the foot of the bed for her own clothes. The woman who spoke first interrupted: "I never in my life had even a hook in the wall that was my own until I was married. We were so near of a size we could wear each other's things, and we did. The one who was quickest got the best of that size. You never knew whose clothes you'd have to put on in the morning. I'll never have but this child. She likes me. She hates being pushed and crowded. She has a bed and bureau of her own. Never, never until my husband can pay more rent will we have another child." She paid the penalty of death for this determination.

As one thinks of the number of human beings with all their belongings crowded into the floor s.p.a.ce of a tenement-house home, the marvel at the endurance grows greater. Think of its limitations of conveniences!

To those who know the limitations of a tenement-house home, the criticisms and suggestions that the superficially informed reformers make on and for the hygienic management of these homes are at once the source of amus.e.m.e.nt and indignation. When stress is laid on airing a bed every morning, and one in imagination sees the only windows in another room with a breakfast table between them, a room already overcrowded with things, the only room for the mother and baby during the process, one wonders what the speaker would do under the same circ.u.mstances. Then when the horrors of dust are revealed and the necessity of keeping the floors clean by frequent was.h.i.+ng is made to be imperative, one sees the bed that just fits between the walls at the head and foot, with half of its own s.p.a.ce free in front of it, and again comes the question, what would the expert do living under like circ.u.mstances? What is needed everywhere is scientific knowledge in conjunction with intimate knowledge of the evils inseparable from the small dark rooms of even the best tenements, and then we will have suggestions that the woman can use--can apply to her own family conditions--who must do the work for a family within this s.p.a.ce.

In the best of the tenements it will be found that where the tenants can afford a parlor, access to it is across the kitchen, where all the work of the family must be done. It will be seen at once the disadvantage at which the house-mother is when friends who are not intimate call. Nothing stands between her and the outer world but the door into a public hallway. The bedrooms admit of a bed, and sometimes, but only in the exceptional bedroom, a bureau. This is usually found in the parlor, if there is one, and in it all the clothes that can be folded, all the little accessories belonging to the family; to this, however, all must have access. If there is a closet for clothes, or if the family can own and house a wardrobe, it is usually in this room, and the common convenience of the family. The bedrooms, dark, offer no s.p.a.ce for a washstand. The kitchen is the common wash-room. The kitchens of the tenement houses built in these later years are a marvel of inconvenience. The dish closet is a few shelves up near the ceiling, the lower one of which can be reached by a woman five feet four standing on the soles of her feet; a chair is necessary to reach the other shelves. Beneath this s.p.a.ce is the pot closet, or it may be the stationary tubs, the top of which provides table s.p.a.ce for cooking conveniences.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CHILDREN'S HOUR AT THE COLLEGE SETTLEMENT.]

There comes to mind now one of the best plans for a tenement having four families on each floor on the East Side. The stairways are lighted by a window on each landing opening on an air shaft, and on each floor is a lavatory with a large window. Each suite consists of four rooms. The parlor has two windows on the street; a kitchen window opening into the parlor, never raised if the family have social standards; and a window on a large air shaft, or s.p.a.ce between the two houses, on which the bedroom windows, which are large, open. The rent for these four rooms is seventeen dollars per month, and they are on the fifth floor. The kitchens in this house have been described. The family have to sit at three sides of the table; there is no room to pull it from the wall; even then one side is uncomfortably near the stove. The only s.p.a.ce except the parlor for a refrigerator is in the bedroom. As there are three young wage-earners supporting the home, who are social, who are encouraged by the widowed mother to have their friends in their own home, this is not to be tolerated. The refrigerator is in the bedroom. It was in that room when it was occupied for four years by a girl dying of tuberculosis. Is it any wonder that the fight against this disease is again being waged in that family? Yet it is above the average of its cla.s.s in intelligence, as the apartments are above the average in the region.

The very elementary necessity of s.p.a.ce and place for privacy in taking a bath is exceptional. For s.p.a.ce, place and light are necessary. A very bright woman, perfectly familiar with the limitations of the tenement-house homes, once said to the writer: "The truth is they cannot be clean if they are decent." A cruel truth which was brought forcibly to the remembrance of the writer one winter afternoon in an East Side home, where a mother was trying to bring up a family to the best of her ability. When the caller went into the living-room of the family a tub stood at the side of the stove, in which was the youngest daughter, a girl about eight; a brother of ten and his boy friend of twelve or fourteen years were playing checkers on the other side of the room. The mother was ironing. There was no consciousness of embarra.s.sment shown by the children. The mother was ashamed, not at the exposure, but at being found out in permitting such an exposure. She was a member of a club where the training of children was a constant theme. The necessity of physical cleanliness, its relation to health, she had grasped, and her children profited by it. The relation between privacy and morals she had not grasped. It was as though a veil had fallen from her eyes as she looked at her daughter of eight standing naked before the two boys. Whether such a thing ever occurred again the caller does not know; that the mother never forgave the caller for finding her out she does know. The family had three bedrooms, but none would permit the placing of a washstand in them. One was the pa.s.sageway from front to rear, for the family occupied a floor, but could afford only one fire.

Privacy is almost impossible in the tenement-house home. One bedroom is usually the pa.s.sageway to the next, if there are two, or both bedrooms are pa.s.sageways from front to rear of the home, and must be used by all the family. Privacy is impossible in these rooms, and there are thousands of just such apartments. Children must grow up in them subject to the limitations, restrictions and exposures their walls compel. This division of s.p.a.ce must fix standards of reserve, of privacy, of social life. No amount of love, not even of intelligence, can save the children from the evils such division of s.p.a.ce imposes on family life. It deadens the sensibilities. The insidious effects of this is not always realized, even by the intelligent parents who accept them as inevitable.

One hardly knows whether to laugh or cry at the inconsistencies of the standards of those who go to Albany to secure the pa.s.sage of bills for the betterment of the conditions of the working people. We have secured a law compelling separate closets for men and women in stores and factories, a righteous measure in the interest of morality. But the closets in the tenements must be used by men, women and children of several families. A neighborly courtesy is the loaning of the key, to save a neighbor a journey upstairs. Children run in from the street, several at a time, for it is the only place provided. This publicity and freedom is the crying evil of the tenements, the one from which tragedies come. The marvel is that so few follow; that in spite, seemingly in defiance, of it all, characters develop that are beautiful, harmonious, true.

Can one condemn the girl facing the worst that can befall her who under pressure that her appeal justifies, yes, makes necessary, confides that her relations with the man who is the father of the coming child began when each were little things six or eight years old? A relation that grew out of lack of privacy, the intimacy forced by tenement-house conditions. Both families have gone far beyond their social position at the time these two were children, but the blasting of innocency has left its burning scar on the girl, and she must bear it alone.

Perhaps it is this necessarily open living that gives the love-making in the tenement region a character peculiarly its own. When interest between the s.e.xes is aroused, it is expressed so frankly and publicly. There are times when restraint would seem to improve manners; but among the working young men and women one is constantly reminded of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. How frankly and unconsciously they must have shown their interest in each other, and how unconsciously they must have revealed their interest in each other to all the other breathing creatures. Perhaps nothing about the love-making is more interesting than that numbers add to the enjoyment of both lovers. Nothing adds more to the happiness of a wage-earning girl than to have her "chum" deeply interested in and deeply interesting to a young man at the same time she is. It seems to be conceded that two couples can have so much more pleasure than one. The terms applied by these young people to each other will reveal their social level in the wage-earning world. If the term "steady" is used where the world of wealth and leisure would use _fiance_, the under wage-earning world is reached. If "friend" is used, the social ladder covered by that word, used in that sense, has many rounds. Knowing many working girls who would use the term "friend" when referring to the man they had accepted as a future husband, or who would in time hold that relation, the writer was constantly impressed by the unconscious protection the girls threw about each other.

One would rarely hear of plans made that did not include two beside the couple engaged, or willing to be. Sometimes two girls were to complete the party. It is evident that the more means the merrier time. In every group of girls there will be two or three who cause anxiety; two or three whose influence, unchecked, may lead to trouble. It is not easy to restrain the young people, for so often the offenses are so naturally the result of environment that to speak directly of them would be most unwise. The chances are that reference to them would put the speaker in the position of possessing knowledge of an undesirable kind; it would seem to suggest evil.

Often it would be a moral shock to many working girls to have their actions criticised from the impression their freedom makes before the cause is understood.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 for the 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?"