The wind howled, then carrying with it bits of paper, flurries of snow and great quantities of smoke and soot, it seemed to sink into the darkness with a dismal moan, which resembled the wailing of some great wild beast in search of its mate.
Shops with their dim lights, which looked like tiny sparks clinging to a black wall, lined the street; tin signs creaked and crashed like miniature thunder; small pieces of shutters flopped against the sides of the weather beaten houses, only to swing into the breeze with each fresh gust, there to quiver on their rusty hinges until a weird, screeching, grating sound denoted that age and elements were victors and one more piece of some antiquated structure had cast anchor and would soon be used to infuse warmth into the body of some poor, unfortunate dweller in the immediate vicinity. The uncertainty of the board walks in this locality caused the pedestrian, whose lot it was to venture here for the first time, to use great care in setting down and picking up his feet.
Half-clad children were there; some with small and precious packages of edibles clutched tightly in their begrimed and reddened hands, some laboring with a plank, which on account of the frozen slush that stuck to it, made it twice their weight; some fighting and sprawling in the filth of the narrow street for the possession of a two-pound lump of coal, that had been jostled from a wagon, while many of them clung tenaciously to the threadbare, misfit garments in which they were clad, with an apparent fear that the wind would use the tattered rags in whipping them to death. The flickering rays of the few and irregular gas lamps which the city had placed at long intervals, did not add cheer to the locality; they only made it more possible for a stranger to realize to a greater extent the squalor which existed there.
Such is a poorly drawn picture of the Ghetto of Chicago.
When compared to the commodious home on the lake front, with its coils of pipes conducting steam into every nook and corner, making even the cellar a place of comfort, the rich rugs, the substantial furnishing of oak and mahogany, the bright lights, the dear little mother, the happy children, the music, pictures and flowers, the well filled larder and comfortable clothing we all enjoy, it is inclined to cause one to forget to complain.
It was no pleasant task, but it was a duty. I have set out to tell the life story of twenty different women, and to get these stories from the lips of the principals, it behooves me to appear to them in person, even though at times I am compelled to freeze myself against all humanity; and, again, so stirred with pity and aroused with sympathy, that I have frequently come away from hovels with just enough change in my pockets for car fare home.
This night, after searching for blocks and burning many matches in a vain endeavor to find the number which I had been given, I was led to the point of my investigation by an old man, who was on his way home from his day’s begging and peddling. He was a kindly Hebrew. “Dis is de blace,” said he, with an instinctive stretching out of the right hand, palm upward. “Bud, meester, I don’t tink dey vill be ad home,” he added, as I laid a half dollar in the still outstretched hand.
“Ah, oh vait! I vill see for you.”
With that he shambled around the side of the tumble-down house, while I stamped my feet on the frozen cinders to keep up circulation, all the time thinking the old man was correct, for there was no sign of life anywhere about the house. Finally he came back.
“Yes, dey vas dere, but you see, meester, Saturday nights iss a bat time to found ’em home.”