Before beginning, however, the recital of how I found my ambition awakened, let me make my position unmistakably definite. I am not a self-made man, having only contributed a mite in the making. A self-made man can turn around to the road traveled by him and can point with pride to the monuments of his achievements. I cannot do that. I have no record of great deeds accomplished. I am a man, reborn and remade from an unfortunate moral condition into a life in which every atom has but the one message, "Strive, struggle and believe," and I would be the sneakiest hypocrite were I to deny that I feel within me a satisfaction at being able to respond to the call with all the possible energy of soul and body. I have little use for a man who cloaks his ability with mock modesty. A man's conscience is the best barometer of his ability, and he who will pretend a disbelief in his ability is either untruthful or has an ulterior motif.
In spite of having, as yet, accomplished little, I have confidence in myself and my ability, because my aims are distinctly reasonable. I regret that in my story the first person singular will be so much in evidence, but it cannot be otherwise. Each fact, each incident mentioned, has been lived by me; the disgrace and the glory, the misery and the happiness, are all part of my life, and I cannot separate them from myself. I know you will not disbelieve me, and I am willing to be confronted by your criticism, which, for obvious reasons, will not be directed against my diction, elegance of style and literary quality. I am not an author. I only have a story to tell and all the rest remains with you.
There was nothing remarkable about my early childhood. Most of the boys of the tenements are having or have had the same experience.
The home which sheltered my foster parents (my own father and mother died in my infancy, as I will tell you later) and myself consisted of two rooms. The rental was six dollars a month. Located on the top floor of an old-style tenement house in Catharine street, our home was lighted and ventilated by one small window, which looked out into a network of wash-lines running from the windows to tall poles placed in the corners of the yard. By craning your neck out of the window you could look into the yard, six stories below, and discover the causes of the stenches which rose with might to your nostrils.
The "front room" was kitchen, dining-room, living room and my bedroom all in one. Beside the cooking range in winter and beside the open window in summer was the old soap box on its unevenly curved supports, which, as my cradle, bumped me into childhood.
As may be surmised, both of my foster parents were Irish. My father, a 'longshoreman, enjoyed a reputation of great popularity in the Fourth Ward, at that time an intensely Irish district of the city. Popularity in the Fourth Ward meant a great circle of convivial companions and a fair credit with the ginmill keepers. His earnings would have been considerable had he been a persistent worker. But men of popularity cannot afford to be constantly at work. It would perhaps fill their pocketbooks, but decrease their popularity. These periods of conviviality, hilarious intervals to my father, were most depressing to my mother.
Life in tenements is a particularly busy one of its kind. When all efforts are directed toward the one end of providing the wherewithal for food and rent, each meal and each rent day is an epoch-making event.
As soon as one month's rent is paid, each succeeding day has its own thoughts of dread "against next rent day." The thrifty housekeeper lays aside a share of her daily allowance—increasing it during the last week of the month—until, with a sigh of relief, she can say, "Thank God, we got it this time."
I firmly believe that a great share of the dread is created by the aversion to a personal meeting with the rent collector or agent. People who have to measure the size of their meals by the length of their purses are very apt to become a trifle unsteady in their ethics concerning financial questions. They are willing to pay their grocer or butcher, but lose sight of the fact that the rent money is the payment for the most important purchase, the securing of their home. They are friendly with the shopkeeper, are often "jollied" by him into spending money otherwise needed, but regard the rent collector as their personal enemy.
There are many rent collectors, and, as in all greater numbers, quite a few are justly criticised for their manner. Many tenements are owned by men, who, though the owners, are only on a slightly different scale socially from their tenants. They are men, who, by great shrewdness or some fortunate chance, accumulated enough to make a real estate investment in their own ward. Naturally, they being familiar with the circumstances of their tenants and having a remnant of neighborly feeling for them, are more easily influenced.