"How is our man getting on?"
"Well, if he does not suit you we'll send you another one."
"We have plenty of schnorrers (beggars) around here."
"That's how they all are—lazy. They want money, not work."
Five minutes later another man is sent. The employment office is not for the benefit of the poor, but to be of service to the rich, to lower the pride of the workingman. During the strike of the cloak makers the telephone of the bureau was continually ringing. The manufacturers demanded help. When any one applied for charity the first question put was: "Are you a tailor?" And they did not believe the man or woman who said "No." If they discovered a tailor there was rejoicing in the Institution and Mr. X. or Mr. Z., a clothing manufacturer, was called up and told the glad tidings. "We are sending you a man."
Thus does organised charity work to break a strike of men who are demanding living wages; a strike where the poor suffer so that their children may live a decent life.
The records of the institution were looked up, and every man and woman who was thought to have had a connection with the needle at any time of his life, or who could operate a sewing machine, was singled out and the order to "cut off" was given. A few days later, men old and broken, sick and worn out women and consumptive girls, were thronging the halls of the institution. They cried and begged and showed handkerchiefs red with the blood of their wounded lungs. There they were with their swollen eyes and hands crippled from the toil of former years. But like the herd of cattle from the slaughter-house, serving only one purpose as far as the man with the long knife is concerned, so were they all, slowly but surely, driven upstairs to the employment office, from where they were escorted to the shops, to finish their days slaving at the machine to enrich the donors of the institution and help in the good work of starving into submission their brothers and sisters on strike for living wages.
When I protested and asked why this was done they said:
"Is this institution kept up by the poor, by the workingman, or by the donations of the rich manufacturers?" And then again I asked:
"But for whom is it kept up?" to which I was answered by sneers and shrugs and laughter.