It was Saturday and they were short-handed, the man in charge explained, both of which facts I knew to be true. If it could go over until Monday or later in the day. Planting myself in front of his desk, I stuck to my point. It was an urgent case, it must be attended to at once.
He promised to do the best he could, and I left him trying to locate his workers, to send them to the address. Back at the tenement, the cars were still standing motionless in the middle of Twenty-third Street—I found that the ambulance had not arrived. That gave me an idea—I would appeal to Miss Wadley.
It was not a case for a hospital social service, I knew that. But I realized that as a big stick the social service department of Bellevue had considerable weight. Though I did not know that it would be needed to make the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children function promptly, I was determined to be on the safe side. I was not taking chances with those girls and their drunken mother.
For a wonder Miss Wadley was out. The worker in charge of the office, the only one who had not finished her work for that day, consented to do all in her power. We had never seen each other before, but she took my word for it, and telephoned urging the children’s society to prompt action.
At one o’clock the wagon of the society stopped before the tenement, and two agents went in. There was no need for me to follow them. The ambulance from Bellevue had not come, so the janitor was there to report conditions.
One of the hideous features of that case was that the mother, that woman who had become no better than a beast, belonged to a respectable family—all of them, excepting her, persons of refinement and education.
Another case that I reported to the children’s society was that of a man who was breeding dogs in the presence of children. As soon as I struck the block I was told about the man, a Polack, who was “shaming” the neighborhood. When I said I would investigate the matter several women begged me not to go near this man, or the houses of which he was the janitor.
I went and I met a dog whose eyes were on a level with my own. It was with this huge animal that he had terrorized the women and children on the block. When he called the dog out he expected to see me beat a hasty retreat.
He did not know what I had learned about myself, or rather about my clothes—they had become so permeated with the scent of dogs that the animals always sniffed me over and then proceeded to treat me as a long-lost friend. This tall black-and-white giant of a dog rubbed his muzzle against my shoulder, then taking his seat at my side, snuggled his head under my hand.
The man was impressed, but not sufficiently to cause him to change his mind. He had declared when I first entered his flat that he would not get a license for either of his three dogs, and he dared me or anybody in New York to try to make him. He was just one of the thousands and tens of thousands of blustering immigrants of low mentality that come into our country every day. He was a huge brute himself and imagined he could cow everybody with whom he came in contact.