“Poor people are shiftless,” said the official, with a shrug of his shoulders.
“That’s what everybody says,” exclaimed Berty, despairingly. “All well-to-do people that I talk to dismiss the poorer classes in that way. But poor people aren’t all shiftless.”
“Not all, perhaps,” said Mr. Morehall, amiably, and with inward rejoicing that Berty was wiping away her tears.
“And there must be poor people,” continued Berty. “We can’t all be rich. It’s impossible. Who would work for the prosperous, if all were independent?”
“What I meant,” replied Mr. Morehall, “was that poverty is very often the result of a lack of personal exertion on the part of the poor.”
“Yes, sir, but I am not just now advocating the cause of the helpless. It is rather the claims of the respectable poor. I know heaps of people on River Street who have only a pittance to live on. Their parents had only the same. They are not dissipated. They work hard and pay what they can to the city. My argument is that these poorer children of the city should be especially well looked after, just as in a family the delicate or afflicted child is the most petted.”
“Now you are aiming at the ideal,” said Mr. Morehall, with an uneasy smile.
“No, sir, not the ideal, but the practical. Some one was telling me what the city has to spend for prisons, hospitals, and our asylums. Why, it would pay us a thousandfold better to take care of these people before they get to be a burden on us.”
“They are so abominably ungrateful,” muttered Mr. Morehall.
“And so would I be,” exclaimed Berty, “if I were always having charity flung in my face. Let the city give the poor their rights. They ask no more. It’s no disgrace to be born poor. But if I am a working girl in River Street I must lodge in a worm-eaten, rat-haunted tenement-house. I must rise from an unwholesome bed, and put on badly made, uncomfortable clothing. I must eat a scanty breakfast, and go to toil in a stuffy, unventilated room. I must come home at night to my dusty, unwatered street, and then I must, before I go to sleep, kneel down and thank God that I live in a Christian country—why, it’s enough to make one a pagan just to think of it! I don’t see why the poor don’t organize. They are meeker than I would be. It makes me wild to see River Street neglected. If any street is left unwatered, it ought to be Grand Avenue rather than River Street, for the rich have gardens and can go to the country, while the poor must live on the street in summer.”