Years passed. The family received several additions one after another at a year's interval, all girls, and then again a boy whom they christened Louis. Women folks never counted at all in the Burgmiller family. They were regarded as reproducing animals only, in spite of all other services they rendered.
Anton and Peter grew rapidly and were in overalls before they had reached their fourteenth year. The girls, strong and fleshy, helped keep the house in order and prepare the meals for the whole family. Hans Burg was proud of them.
But little Louis, the youngest of the brood, did not develop like his brothers and sisters. His chest was narrow. His muscles flabby. His legs thin. He could not lift any weight to speak of. A change of weather threw him in bed. After he was doctored by the mother with roots and herbs the medicus was called in. It happened at least twice a week. His bills were even larger than a plumber's. There never was a week in which Louis did not cause a large extra expense. As little and small as he was, he was the dead weight that dragged them all down. They had to economize for his sake. Leberwurst became a luxury instead of a staple article on the table of the Burg family. And just because Louis was so puny and weak the mother and the father loved him more than any of the other children. It was as if the whole family lived for nothing else than to expiate the sin of Louis's ailments.
When Louis was fourteen years old, he did not don overalls. He continued school. He had the best of clothes and the best of foods. In summer time he was sent to the mountains with his mother to take care of him. Louis entered High School. Anton, his oldest brother, married but remained with the firm, drawing a weekly salary—a smaller one than he could have gotten elsewhere. Then Peter married and began to draw a weekly salary. But neither Anton nor Peter were as husky and strong as they might have been. They had worked a little harder and fed a little less well than it was good for them. They had started work too soon and endured too many privations because of Louis's continual expensive existence.
From High School Louis, still nurtured and doctored, entered college. He was still too weak to work. His older sisters, rosy, carnate Gretchens, withered away working hard and living loveless lives because of the expense of Louis's upkeep.
Louis, as a college man, began to look down upon all of them. In natty suit and clean linen, supplied with money, as much as he wanted because they dared not contradict the "poor sick boy," he associated only with the gentlemen of the college. His brothers were just ordinary workingmen; ill mannered and ignorant. The time came when father Hans was called to his Maker. The Burgmillers were not of a long-living stock. And when the will was opened, everything belonged to the "poor weak Louis, who was not able to work like his strong brothers."
"Poor weak Louis" became the owner of the Burg & Burg establishment founded on the sweat of four generations. And because he was too weak to work himself, his broad shouldered brothers had sunken cheeks, bent backs, while Louis, the prosperous Louis Burg, exhibits his flashy clothes and his learning.
SOCIALISTS! BEWARE OF MRS. ROSENBERG
A mistaken idea floats about that the whole east side is socialistic. I made a special investigation to find out how it stood. I found some men who were still Socialists, some who had been, some who still pretended to be, some still clinging to it as a profession.