But nowhere did I find any one hating the doctrine so profoundly as on Third Street and Second Avenue, where lives Mrs. Rachael Rosenberg. She rents out furnished rooms. The first thing she asked me when I applied for a room was:
"Are you a Socialist? If you are, I don't want you. If you are not, we will talk business."
"I am not a Socialist," I told her. "Still, I never heard of people refusing them as boarders!"
"I suppose you know all about Socialism from books," Mrs. Rosenberg put in sneeringly. "But I tell you one never knows anybody or anything until you come in close contact with 'em. I will only go and see that the stew does not burn, and after I will tell you what I know."
And this is the story as she told it to me:
"My husband's name is Moritz Rosenberg. We came here in President Cleveland's time—which is more than you and many others could say. At home he was—what's the use to tell you what! Here he became a cloak operator. After the Cleveland financial crisis, when men died of starvation, I decided to help out my Moritz. We lived on Catharine Street, near the river, in two rooms only. I put out a shingle 'Boarders Wanted,' and got two the same day. I bought a double bed for them. Each one paid four dollars a month, so my whole rent cost me two dollars. And that was not all. I gave them breakfast and supper for two dollars a week. Things were cheap then. I actually earned our food.
"Why shouldn't a woman help her husband especially if God has not given her any children? Well, after a while we moved out to a bigger apartment on Monroe Street, four rooms with bath and all other conveniences. So I rented two more rooms to four more people. It gave me a lot of work, but we saved all my Moritz earned and more.
"He had a steady job at Kuntzman's and worked there year in, year out. He had started with Kuntzman's and worked there—yes, strike or no strike, good season, slack season, fourteen dollars a week every week.
"I treat my boarders well, so that once moved in no one moves out, unless his wife comes from Europe or he marries, if he is a single man. I shall live many years for each dollar I made as a marriage broker—and every couple as happy as could be.