CHAPTER XXX EVALUATION
The first two years on The Clarion were a desperate struggle for Yetta. But after all, struggle is the surest sign of life. To herself she seemed dead. The collapse of her romance had left a hollow place in her spirit, which could not be filled by work—not even the frenzy of work by which each issue of The Clarion was achieved. But all this time life was gathering force within her, preparing to assert itself once more.
Our literature is full of the idea of Man, the Protector—a proposition which crumbles before the slightest criticism. The protective element in life is overwhelmingly feminine. No one of us would have survived the grim dangers of childhood except for mothering. Adult men—even though unconscious of it—are pretty generally dependent on their womenfolk.
A function unused surely turns into an ache. Because Yetta felt no one dependent on her, life seemed barren and painful. The outer wrapper of herself—the hands with which she banged out copy on her typewriter, the feet which carried her about, the eyes and ears with which she watched and listened to the conflict of labor, the tongue with which she argued and pleaded for money, the brain with which she pondered and planned—all were busy. But this hurrying activity did not touch the subtle inner substance of herself. For this there was only the barren, empty ache.
Coming downtown one night from a union meeting in the Bronx, Yetta's eye caught a paragraph in the paper which told that David Goldstein, proprietor of the Sioux Hotel, who had been shot two days before in a gang fight, had died in the City Hospital.
It was the first Yetta had heard of her relatives since she had left them. She stayed on the car until she had reached the centre of the Ghetto. A policeman, who was standing outside the Sioux Hotel, went inside for her and found her aunt's address. It was not far off, and in a few minutes Yetta found herself in the dismalest of three-room flats. Half a dozen dumb, miserable old women sat in the kitchen. It was with some difficulty that Yetta made out which was Mrs. Goldstein.
"Aunt Martha, don't you remember me?" she asked in Yiddish.
But Mrs. Goldstein was too dazed to reply. From the other women, Yetta learned that her aunt was entirely alone and penniless. The son had not been seen for several years. Rosa had disappeared. As soon as might be Yetta drove out the Kovna lands leit, and when they were gone, she knelt down beside the old woman.