"No, I won't," she answered, "but I wanted to see these gentlemen and see whether I could not soften their hearts. We could live on so little—on so little," she pleaded.
"It's of no use," I told her. "You can't soften their hearts. They are made of rock."
"Then what can I do?" she asked, crying.
"Anything you want, or you don't want, but don't come around here. The less you show yourself here the better for you."
She looked at me in a funny way. What did she think of me anyhow? Who knows what sense she gave to my words! God knows. I don't know what people will think when they read this. If they only knew what I know. There is no place on earth to duplicate this one. Nowhere can you hear and see what you hear and see here. The walls and pictures and benches and floors, everything is soaked in tears.
The Erikson woman got hold of the Manager on the stairs while he was going to his lunch. She cried. He listened to her very attentively, then he answered in that silky voice of his, "You put the chairman in a very bad temper yesterday, but I will do my best for you. Call next week." She wanted to say something but he strode away with such majesty! It's of no use, I foresee. She will give her children and they will place her somewhere as a servant. There is a great demand for domestic help. The domestic help problem is filling the columns of the daily papers. The office will do its best to solve the problem.
I had a conversation with the janitor. He told me that the job disgusts him and if times were better he would throw it up. I thought for a moment that he meant the brutality of the investigators, but no. He says that these scoundrels, paupers, are yelping too much. He can't eat his dinner in peace. He lives with his wife and children in the building. What will become of his children? The sights they see every day! They understand it all. His little girl, a child of seven, calls the people "delelicts." "Papa, quick, a delelict threw a fit," she called out yesterday when coming from school for lunch. The father was upstairs. There is an old man coming every Tuesday for his two dollar pension. Sam announced him as the "dean." It can't be Sam's expression. He must have heard it from some one else of the staff. The cashier, perhaps! She is the daughter of the "terror." A true child, no mistake possible. She never pays out a cent without a remark. If it's five dollars she says, "One hundred times for the movies." If it's ten dollars, "Sale at Wanamaker's, latest style French hats $9.98." "If it were in my power," she once told me, "they would never get cash. Bread, and meat and vegetables, but not a cent of cash."
Strange they are always afraid lest the poor have too much joy! They would like to see them always crying, kneeling, begging. Before going for lunch, Cram had a long chat with the cashier. They are on very good terms. Mrs. B. even hinted at a secret engagement between the two. What a difference in their voices when they speak to one another and when they speak to applicants! It seems to me very strange to see them smile or laugh. I never thought them capable of that. I would like to see them cry once. Some spiritual pain, or a brick to hit them, and then to see them cry. Why not? They have drawn enough from the fountain of suffering—the eyes of the poor.
After the lunch hour I was given the address of Mrs. Erikson and told to reinvestigate her case. She has made an impression on the manager. He is not quite so brutal as his subordinates. He knows that charity is not solving the question of poverty and he doubts all the investigators. But he can't help it. The current of the old established system is too strong for him. As a matter of fact they are all working against him. Not openly, of course. They are continually intriguing and plotting one against the other. The women are Machiavellis in petticoats. Every move is spied, reported. They even investigate privately.
I visited Mrs. Erikson. The usual thing. Have I grown callous? I don't seem to notice the difference between one case of poverty and any other. Even their talk does not interest me as before. I anticipate everything: two months back rent; owe eight dollars to grocer; one dollar and fifty cents to the coalman; gas bill, etc. They all owe back rent and the grocer and the coalman, the gas bill. Their rooms are all alike. Beds, table and chairs. They even look alike. Their original features are stamped out by the seal of charity. Their voices are alike, speaking in a subdued minor key of the same pitch and the same pleading inflection.