THE PICTURE
In the course of time I became very suspicious of every record in the Charity Institutions. Not one appeared to me truthful. I knew I could not trust them any more than I would trust police records that are made up not to give information but very often only to shield a particular policeman. They are coloured so as to give the impression that it was difficult to procure the information. Often the detective sent out to get the particulars spends the time in a saloon or gambling house, then on a few meagre details he makes up his report. When contradicted by the "case" he simply says the man lies. The same thing happens with the investigations of charitable institutions. Knowing this I suspected every record of being far from the facts. In my investigations I made it a rule not to take anything for granted from the reports, but to look into the matter myself.
One rainy day I looked through the records and laid aside the ones I intended to work upon the next day. I decided to reinvestigate cases where the pension had been discontinued. By this time it was very difficult for me to work. The investigators feared me and had drilled their "customers" to so answer my questions as to conform to the report they had made on the case. Wherever I went, under whatever guise, I was anticipated. The people were on the qui-vive and I often had to give up my investigation without marked results.
At first I did not know to what to attribute my non-success and the Manager grew impatient and spurred me on. "Results, results. If you don't bring us extra information you are of no great use to us." Such was the tenor of his speech. They needed "extra information." Right or wrong, by hook or crook, but extra information to give an excuse for my pay envelope. But it did not take long before I learned the cause of my ill success. The people were warned.
I knew of several investigators who did it and I could have reported them and had them discharged, but I disliked to do so. So I reported to the Manager that some one had warned them and that I was working on a clue to find out who had done it, when I would report. Naturally this made them stop their interference. This subterfuge gave me time to do other work—investigate the "discontinued" cases. It was work for myself and I had no need for hurry, nor did I need to make a report of my findings.
I copied a few addresses and some other particulars and the next day I set out on my tour.
One of the cases that particularly interested me was the case of a young Irish lady, a widow with four children, who had been pensioned for four years. The report of the investigator was a continuous description of misery and misfortune. One of the children, at least, was always sick. At times there were three in bed and the mother too was in an "awful condition." This was so from 1908 to 1910, until the month of December of that year, the reports never being farther apart than two weeks. Then, all of a sudden, the report was discontinued for two months, until the end of February, and was then very much colder than usual. It simply mentioned that Mrs. G. was much better and the children well. The next one, made in April, contained an interesting item. The older child, nine years old, was selling papers. "The woman denied that she knew anything about it but I saw him myself," read the report. For May of the same year there were three reports, the last one speaking of a "pail of beer and cigarettes, in company with other men and women." It advises the application of the "test." Then, after that, one big word. "Discontinued."
It took me some time before I found Mrs. G. She had moved three times in eight months and when I at last found her she was living in 63rd Street, in a house near the river. Her dwelling was more like the hole of a water rat than the quarters of a human being in a civilised city of the New World. A mattress on the floor, a folding bed with torn sides, on an egg box a gas stove, a rocking chair that had seen better days, some rags hanging on the walls, this was the furniture of the house. And the woman herself. She fitted excellently into the picture. It was as though a painter had grouped them together as the subject of a masterpiece of misery, to hold the world up to shame. Tall and angular, her hair dishevelled, her face unclean, with dress torn, through which greyish dirty linen peeped out, with bare feet in a pair of shoes picked up from a garbage can, she stood in the middle of the room and looked wonderingly at me, not knowing to what she owed my visit. She had hardly enough strength to answer my questions. There were no children in the house. I told her who I was. Her face lit up and she asked me about the investigator—a man—who was in charge of the district. Pointblank I put the question:
"How are you making a living?"