The leaven in a great city

by Lillian William Betts

YOUR CHOICE.

The closer one entered into the individual life, the more clearly was it revealed that the problems of poverty grew out of the inability to see the relations of things, to comprehend life in its entirety. Even after two years of close relation with these people in the alleys, it was with the utmost caution and tact that the subject of free coal could be broached. It was then distributed by the city—an intimate source of political corruption. A large quantity of coal was purchased and put in the cellar. It was offered to the tenants at the same price the grocer sold it by the pail, with the difference that it was delivered in the rooms. First, pride, a desire to appear somewhat above the neighbors, moved to independence on the coal question. In two years' time free coal was in the category of disgraces in the alley, and marked a rising moral tide.

A young woman and her husband were special objects of attention to the agents. They were young, good-looking, bright, and, when sober, ambitious as their conception of life made possible. Both drank, the woman more than the man, and she sank lower when drunk. For years she had spent more time on the Island than off it. What could be done? The whitewashing and painting of the two hopelessly barren rooms seemed to bring the woman to a pause. It was not possible to get beer through a neighbor's child now, and until she was drunk this woman would not go into a saloon. The clean alley, washed every morning, by some process of reasoning seemed to demand corresponding effort indoors, and the barren rooms were never dirty when the woman was sober. Even this gave employment to hands that had never used a needle, therefore less time was spent lounging in the doorway or other rooms. The washing of clothes, though ragged and few, took time and centered the interest, if but for a short time. The look of utter weariness and indifference in the face of the woman was slowly disappearing. There was really a purpose in life; the four walls and little else that was home required thought and effort. Life had an object at last. But the devil of drink was not so easily conquered; she was gone one morning from home. The neighbors explained to the agents her absence, being familiar with the habits of the type. In court she listened again indifferently to "Ten dollars or ten days." This time a woman came forward, paid the ten dollars, and Agnes was free. Surprised, dumb-stricken, wondering why, Agnes followed the friend home. New clothes, simple, suitable, were waiting for her. Then the fight began. At times it was hourly. Work was provided that the clumsy, untrained hands could do. The proceeds were to pay for a new carpet, that had to be unrolled many times to hold Agnes from the street. At last it was down, and the two friends added a rocker and a picture. Tom was a new man, and every penny of his wages came home. All this time the prosperity of the couple was viewed by most of the people as due to passing "good luck." That there was a moral battle being fought did not seem to enter their consciousness. Four years later, on the stairway, the writer saw Agnes with her beautiful baby boy, her first-born, on her arm. The comprehension of what the sight must have been on the Mount of Transfiguration has always been clearer when the expression on the face of Agnes, as she met the woman who had fought for her salvation for time and eternity, is recalled. Two years had passed since Agnes had tasted liquor in any form. Her passionate devotion to her baby, her new knowledge of the arts of home-making, kept her so busy that Agnes was rarely a visitor to her neighbors, except in the case of sickness. Tom's love of liquor seemed limited; largely a matter of companionship or discouragement. When his home became a center of interest to Agnes, his buoyant nature responded to the new environment. When liquor disappeared from the home, it ceased to be a constant temptation. Outside of his home Tom found for a time that his new departure attracted to him unpleasant attention, guying, teasing, coaxing, which he met with jokes. Force as an inducement to make him drink was met by blows; and Tom struck heavily. The new impulse for a better life brought heavy social penalties on Tom and Agnes. It meant nothing in common with those about them. When a man and woman will neither treat nor be treated at that social level social ostracism follows. Their home was the refuge of the children driven by frenzied, drunken parents from their own homes. What they had they shared with the children when the parents were on the Island. When sickness came to homes in the alleys, Tom and Agnes could be relied upon to share and help in carrying the added burdens. Tom's muscles and the knowledge of their power saved many a wife from blows that, without Tom, would have fallen freely. Back of their every effort stood the two wise women who were redeeming this corner of the great city. The day came when Tom and Agnes realized the boy must grow up in a different neighborhood, and Tom and Agnes moved.

The making of a laundry compelled the removal of a childless couple who had occupied their rooms over thirty years. It was impossible to make them accept the fact that the children could play in the alley under the new régime. For years the old woman and her stick were familiar to the sight and the feelings of the children of the alley. "I'm in Dixie's Land. Dixie ain't home!" had been shouted under their windows, at their room door, which was very near the alley door, to bring them out in torrents of rage. As age made the old couple less fleet and more quarrelsome, the daring of the children grew, and any time of the day or night the conflict between the old couple and the children, in which parents figured, was a possibility. Peace became impossible. The decision was final; the old couple must go; their rooms were necessary to the new improvements. It was pathetic to discover that no amount of persuasion would make the old couple live north of Roosevelt Street; it meant a lowering in their social world. "I've always lived respectable, and I always will. I would not live in that block," announced the old woman, with conscious pride. Even the alley, it was found, had standards of residence, a line that must not be crossed, to maintain respectability.

By this time the mental attitude of every woman in the alleys had changed toward her home. Positive determination to overcome inertia, or ambition to excel, it was impossible to create. Innate predilections were the chief factor in individual development among the women. What a woman liked to do she attempted to learn how to do, or what she found she could do most easily. Some would learn to cook who absolutely refused to sew; some would sew who refused to cook; some would take care of the babies while the mothers were learning who would neither cook nor sew, feeling they could do both well enough; these it was impossible to make home-makers. The shackles of the past could never be thrown off wholly by the home-makers in the alleys. The children responded; could be won by personal affection, by prizes, by the mother's insistence. For it was soon learned that nimble fingers in the home lightened the mother's work; but the mothers were the unwilling victims of their own past.

The use of money was the most difficult lesson of all to teach. If there was money, the food was bought lavishly; pennies were given freely to the children. If there was no money, the barrenness was accepted even cheerfully. Wages were given at the maximum weekly amount remembered. No deductions were made for idle days. It requires a knowledge of advanced arithmetic to adjust intelligently forty weeks of wages to fifty-two weeks of expenses. It requires more than an elementary knowledge of arithmetic to adjust five days' wages to the seven days' expenses, fixed and emergency, of a growing family. When a week comes that brings six or seven days' wages, is it a marvel that in view of the many weeks of imposed restrictions this week of wealth should be welcomed as a period of freedom from care? That the money should be lavishly used? It takes the ability to think, to connect cause and effect, imagination, to see possible results, memory of experiences to hold men and women constantly in check, and this means mental training. Not a woman in the alley had attended school regularly during even the short period of her school life; each one had gone to work the moment she could earn money. Neither she nor any one about her questioned the value of the work she found to do beyond the money it gave at once. Nobody ever thought of the present as in relation to the future. Now that she was a mother, she met life the same way. Her children must earn money. To make sacrifices that their wage-earning capacity in the future might be greater would, if suggested to her, have been merely an evidence of how little the rich know of life. What was the estimate of life these mothers in the alley made? The differences between them were external, not mental. One answers for nearly all. To get as much comfort out of to-day as possible and to-morrow work hard, and be careful. To the majority that to be used to-morrow never came. When plenty came, it was always to-day—a glad, free day that might never come again.

At the end of four years but four of the tenants of the alleys who were tenants when the lease was executed had been evicted. The death rate had lowered from 85 to 22 per cent. The tenants rarely appeared in the police courts. Wife-beating created excitement and indignation. But in spite of the awakening, a moral, mental, physical inertia, stagnation, held more than the majority of the tenants in control. There was spasmodic response; but the painful truth had to be accepted that there must be redemptive power within to respond to redemptive conditions without before the home could be vitalized with the spirit of hope and energy. Fifty years and more of neglect and indifference cannot be overcome in five years of moral activity exerted to overcome the evils man neglected to prevent.

The alleys are gone; some tenants drifted to other scenes, more settled in the tall, dark tenements that have sprung up through the whole district, the worst type erected in New York. The rear buildings abound even back of the tall factories, reached by dark, noisome alleys. No amount of care or repair could save the old houses. They have gone the way of all material things. Their history is a part of the social and political history of New York.