"Eight years ago, in Roumania, I married the man of my choice. He was a dentist. Soon after our marriage a terrible persecution against the Jews started. Jews were killed on the slightest pretext and their murderers were never brought to justice. The parents of the murdered, fearing vengeance, never tried to prosecute the criminals. It went so far that killing a Jew became a kind of sport. We quit that cursed land and came here. My husband, not knowing English, could not pass the State Board examination and worked clandestinely until he was trapped by the County Medical Association. He paid his fine and was let go free, but he was afraid to work, and to hire out to others in this line is so poorly paid that he could not even think of it. Soon the little money we had was gone and to earn our bread he went to work in a tailor's factory as presser. A child was born. Not accustomed to manual work, and angry at what he considered his degradation, he fell sick. When he got better he took to drink. Oh! those nights when he came home unable to stand on his feet and crying. I would talk to him the next day—cry—and threaten to leave him. He would promise to reform and the next pay day he would come home drunk again.
"A second child was soon born. One day, at work, he spat blood. They brought him home. He went to bed and when the youngest child was six weeks old he died of consumption. This was five years ago. I was unable to do anything to earn my living. Some friends helped me out for a while but soon I was forgotten. On account of my small children I could not go out to work. I also knew no trade. A few months afterwards I applied to the charities for help. They wanted to take my children away to an orphanage. This I could not bear. They are my children—I cannot separate from them. Finally they agreed to pension me—two dollars and my rent. From such a small sum we could not live. I learned to do some work in the artificial flower business. I took work home, and in the season, working until midnight, I would average about three dollars a week. The investigator reported that I worked. One day she met me on the street. I had just put on a new dress I had bought. The next week my pension did not come. I went to the office and inquired.
"If you earn enough money to buy dresses you don't need charity," was their answer. I explained to them that my other dress was torn, that my new dress cost only two dollars, as I had made it myself, and offered to prove to them that I did not earn more than three dollars a week. My pension was resumed, but ever since the investigator has treated me very badly. She has forced me to move every two or three months. Here it was too dear, there too high, there too good, and so on. Last month she came to me at ten o'clock one night. As I was already in bed I did not let her in. She insisted and threatened that she would cut me off. This enraged me still further and I did not open the door for her. She stood in the hall more than half an hour, then she again knocked at the door, cursed and went away. The next week was rent week. I received no money, and the landlord, who knew that the charities pay my rent, came and told me that unless he received his cheque in two days he would put me out.
"I went to the charities to ask why they did not send the money. I was directed to a little room, on the door of which is written: 'Investigator.' Mr. Cram came in, and seating himself before me began the most insolent questioning one could imagine. How much did I spend at the grocery? How much at the butcher? How much for dresses? Then he began to question me about my friends. I told him that no friends came to my house. 'So,' he said, with an insolent twinkle in his eyes, 'and who is the gentleman who was in your room the night you did not open the door to Miss ——?' I felt my blood rush to my head. It was too much. I struck him in the face and would have killed him if I had had my way. They arrested me; the Judge freed me, and here I am."
As she finished, the words of the employé of the office who told me the story rang again in my ears:
"It's Cram's own fault, he is too good to them."
Great God! I felt so little when I went away. Here was a real heroine.
"Could you give me any money for my little ones?" she asked. Not a trace of the beggar in her attitude or voice. I humbly gave her what I could and considered myself happy to have shaken hands with a real human being.