Two months later he received notice of a ten-dollar-a-month raise—the cost of living was so high, the owner explained, that she had to have more money. A few months more and yet another raise. This notice was served just after the birth of one baby and before the birth of the other. With one young woman just home from the hospital and the other expecting to go any day, the family was in no condition to move.
With Mr. Bruno the only worker in the family, for the allotment due each of the young wives had not been paid, ten dollars more rent meant starvation. The two children, boy and girl, were taken out of school and put to work. Their wages made up the needed ten dollars a month and gave something over to meet the rise in the cost of all the necessities of life.
Shortly after the birth of the second baby the tenement-owner made a tour of inspection, looked over her property. As described by the occupants of her tenement she was a large, “fleshy” lady. All agreed that her clothes, furs, diamonds, and automobile were “grand.” As an additional evidence of her grandeur, besides her chauffeur there was seated another grown man in uniform, whose only duty, so far as the women and children living in her tenement could understand, was to hop out when the automobile stopped and hold open the door.
When collecting the next rent the agent of this property-owner informed each tenement that at a certain time the house was to be repaired and the flats made over. Six flats were to be made on each floor where before there had been four. Each flat was to be sharer of one dark room, so that the new flats were to contain two rooms each, a kitchen and bedroom.
On being questioned the agent declared that he had not been told anything about rent. But the tenants, convinced that by giving up a room they would lower their rent, submitted to the alterations.
When rent-day came the same amount was required of them. Those who objected were made to leave. Mrs. Bruno, before expressing her indignation, went out to find a flat into which to move her family. She told me that she looked for two weeks, paid car-fare, and almost wore a pair of good shoes out without finding anything better, or so good.
“Father got an offer of night-work—it wasn’t easy for him, beginnin’ at his age—but the pay was better, and him sleepin’ days give us more room nights,” she said. Then with a shake of the head she added: “We thought rents had gone as high as they could go, seein’ that folks had begun to kick about ’em. Jesus! Less than three months the agent comes round again and serves another notice of a raise—we had to pay more’n double for these three rooms what we’d paid for four when we moved in.”
A few days after this raise in rent Lucretia, the daughter, learned that her husband had been killed somewhere in France. Work being plentiful she got a night job—pay was better and it left more room in the beds at night for those of the family employed during the day.
The cost of living continuing to soar, the son’s wife got a job to supplement the government allotment. Because of the higher pay she too took night-work. Within a short time she was back in the hospital, both she and her baby sick. The doctor forbade her working at night. Urged by her mother, Lucretia also got a day job.
At the end of the war the son came back, and Mrs. Bruno once more started out to look for a flat, a home for her son and his family. Until such a home was found it was deemed wisest for the son to go with his father, take night-work. Just when the old woman gave up her search for a flat as a useless waste of time, her son’s “buddie” came sailing into New York harbor with his French wife, soon to become a mother.