The home manufacture of ostrich feathers first gave Hamilton a clear insight into poverty. Four or five rooms each occupied by a family of several persons he entered in one tenement, and in each he found three or four people working over ostrich plumes, working nervously at high speed, afraid to stop, even for a moment. He noted conditions carefully, and was amazed to find that each of the little strands was wired—he had always supposed that plumes grew upon the ostrich the way that they are sold.
In one such family dejection seemed to have reached its lowest ebb. The window looked out on a court,—a court that was never cleaned and where all manner of rubbish was thrown. Although it was morning and a brilliant, sunshiny day, the light within was so dim that it was hard to work by; yet with characteristic shiftlessness the window had not been washed for months and diminished still further the little light there was; a mattress in the opposite corner from a shaky cooking gas-burner showed that this room was the entire home.
TAKING THE CENSUS IN A CITY. Enumerator at a doorway, entering in his portfolio the details of a household.
"Where is your husband?" asked the boy, noting on the schedule a man's name as head of the family.
"In hospital—perhaps dead. See!"
The woman pointed to a telegram which had fallen to the floor. Hamilton picked it up. It read:
"John Sobieski worse. Come at once," and was signed with the name of one of the large hospitals.
"Did you go?" asked the boy.
The woman shook her head.