TWENTY-ONE CENTS AND A QUARTER
An old couple who had once seen better days and whose only son died of caisson disease after working two months on the laying of the pillars which support the Williamsburg Bridge between New York City and Brooklyn, was supported by organised charity. Rent, coal and three dollars a week for food. For two years they lived on this scant pension, when all at once they were told to give up the flat; two rooms in a basement.
"You will be placed in Homes," was the explanation given. For fifty years these two old people lived together, shared joys and sorrows. They protested, cried, explained—all in vain. Their fate was decided in the office and after the usual test to recalcitrant paupers the two victims submitted. Bed, chairs and table were sold to the secondhand dealer for a few cents, then each of the two took a bundle in one hand, the picture of the dead son in another; one took the car for the north and the other for the east side of the city. The fifty years old bond was broken.
The cause of this act was the desire on the part of the charities to economise. The difference between keeping the old people in their own home and placing them in different Homes was eighty-five cents a month—twenty-one and one-quarter of a cent a week.
It did not take very long before the old man went on that journey whence no man has yet returned, and a few weeks after his wife followed him. There is no doubt that the separation had hastened their deaths. They had been together for fifty years, each growing accustomed to the other's habits and ways. Then, of a sudden, they were torn apart.
Speaking to an official of organised charity I drew his attention to the ridiculous economy realised through separating the old couple. The man looked at me for awhile and as an answer he said: "You are a baby."
A few months later he announced to me: "You know the old fellow—Sig—died, and his wife also."
I wanted to tell him that death was hastened by the criminal stupidity of organised charity, but he went on exulting in his own wisdom.