“Good-morning,” said Salome in pleasant tones.
“Good-morning, miss.” The politeness of Salome’s manner thawed the other woman, and the door opened a little wider. “Will you walk in?”
That was precisely what she had come for, and Salome stepped inside with alacrity. She found herself in the sitting-room and living-room of the family. It was a meager home. The remnant of a faded oil-cloth was on the floor. The walls were unpapered and devoid of any attempts at ornament, except one unframed, dilapidated old lithograph of “The Queen of the West,”—a buxom young woman with disproportionately large black eyes, a dress of bright scarlet cut extremely décolleté, and cheeks of a yet more vivid hue. A pine table covered with a stamped red cloth was littered with cheap, trashy story-papers and pamphlets addressed “To the Laboring Men of America.” An old lounge, with broken springs, and six common wooden chairs constituted the other furnishings of the room.
Salome’s first thought as she looked about her was:
“I don’t wonder these people get discontented and clamor for something which seems to them better.”
But she found, before the forenoon was over, many houses that were not so pleasant as this. For, once inside these rooms, everything was neat and clean, and the woman who answered her questions was civil if not talkative.
She found that five people lived in these four small rooms: this woman, her two daughters, a son-in-law, and a grandchild. She also found that the other tenements contained five, six, and seven people, making twenty-three in all. There were absolutely no sanitary arrangements, and she discovered that the sanitation of this tenement house district consisted only of surface drainage. According to the statements of her hostess, there was nearly always somebody “ailing” in these houses.
The first house she went into was a fair sample of the remainder. A few were slightly better, but more were in a worse condition. In most instances she was respectfully received, although at three houses she was met by ungracious people, and received gruff replies to her kindly-put inquiries.
Everywhere, strong, able-bodied men were lounging about in enforced idleness; and one of them, resenting, with true American independence, this intrusion into the sacred precincts of his miserable home, plainly intimated that “they was well enough off now, and didn’t want no rich folks as was livin’ on money they earned, to come pryin’ round their houses.” Finally, at the last of the tenement houses she was met by a surly, burly mule-spinner, who gruffly refused her admittance.
Nothing daunted, however, she sought out a boarding-house for the young women of the mills. The landlady, recognizing her, invited her in and willingly told her all about the life of mill-girls, offering, at last, to show her their rooms.