“Poverty in Chicago.”
Life Under the Shadows
Poverty in Chicago.
It is a terrible thing to be poor in any part of the world. In Chicago poverty is simply a living death. The city is full of suffering and misery. Some of the wretched people who endure it have, no doubt, brought it upon themselves by drink, by idleness, or by other faults, but a large majority are simply unfortunate. Their poverty has come upon them through no fault of their own; they struggle bravely against it, and would better their condition if they could only find employment. They are held down by an iron hand, however, and vainly endeavor to rise out of their misery. They dwell in wretched tenement houses, in cellars of buildings in the more thickly populated parts of the city, and in shanties, and hovels in almost every quarter of the city. A few families, even in the midst of their sufferings, manage to keep their poor quarters clean and neat, but the majority live in squalor and filth. But little furniture is to be seen in the rooms of the poor. Everything that can bring money has been sold for the means with which to buy food. Many of these wretched homes have been stripped of all their contents for this purpose. A cooking stove sometimes constitutes the only article of furniture in a room, and the inmates sleep upon the floor. Not a chair or table is to be seen. Often there is no stove, and the only food that passes the lips of the occupants of these rooms is what is given them in charity.
The inmates of these wretched homes are often families who have seen better days. Once the husband and father could give those dependent upon him a comfortable home, and provide at least the necessaries of life. But sickness came upon him, or death took him, and the little family was deprived of his support. In vain the mother sought to procure work to keep her children in comfort. What work she could procure was at intervals, and the little she earned barely sufficed to keep a roof over their heads. Little by little they sank lower and lower, until poverty in its worst form settled upon them. The city is full of such cases, and missionaries, whose labors among the poor bring them in constant contact with scenes of suffering, confess that they do not know how these poor people manage to live. Whole blocks are filled with families on the verge of starvation. They would gladly work if they could get employment; but the city is so full of sufferers like themselves that they cannot escape from their wretched condition. The so-called Ghetto and other localities present scenes of misery which almost surpass belief. Many of the dwellers here pick up a bare subsistence.
To those who visit these sections of the city, each one seems worse than the other. The “Ghetto” is the most wretched haunt occupied by human beings in the country. It is easily found. Cross the river at Harrison street, go west to Jefferson street, turn south. Anybody can tell you where it is. There is no mistaking the place. A junkman’s cellar in the front of the house opens widely to the street, and, peering down, one may see a scene of men and women half buried in dirty rags and papers which they are gathering up and putting in bales for the paper mills. This is the general depot to which the rag-picker brings his odds and ends for sale after he has assorted them. Just as we emerge from this cellar, a rag-picker, heavily laden, passes up the stoop, and enters the hall above. Standing here and looking up, one beholds a sight that cannot be imagined. Rags to the right of him, rags to the left of him, on all sides nothing but rags. Lines in the yard draped with them, windows hung with them, every available object dressed in rags—and such rags! of every possible size, shape and color. Some of them have been drawn through the wash-tub to get off the worst dirt, but for the most part they are hung up just as they were taken from the bags, and left to the rain and snow to cleanse them. The exterior of the buildings is wretched enough; the interior equally so.
Some of the rooms on a cloudy day are as dark as dungeons, with but little light coming through the dirty window on the front and the smaller one on the back. Every inch of the ceiling and walls is black and dirty. Against this dark background are hung numerous hats, kettles, pans, joints of raw meat, partly consumed Bologna sausages, gowns of women, and so on. The beds are almost invariably covered with old carpets, that still retain some bits of their original color. None of the chairs have backs, and hardly any of them have four legs. Seated upon these uncertain supports, or often an empty soap box or upturned boiler, are the rag-pickers. Every man in the house has his hat on, including the one in bed napping after the hard work of the early morning. Not one bare-headed man is seen anywhere. Some of them are sitting dreamily by the stove, but most of them are sorting rags or cutting up old coats and pantaloons that are too much used to wear, and stuffing the bits into the bags for the junk dealer. In one room is a woman washing bones with her dirty hands, in another place four men are seated on a big chest, with a bit of Bologna sausage in one hand and a chunk of black bread in the other, making their noon-day meal. These same hands have just finished turning over filthy scraps from the garbage boxes and the gutters. On the ground floor a man, who looks for all the world like a brigand, is stirring broth over the fire, and the horrible odor of rottenness that comes from the pot is enough to knock one down.
Few of the members of the Italian colony speak English, except here and there one has mastered a few common phrases; but there is one word that all of them understand, and that is “Beer.” Here, as in other quarters where the poor are found, sour beer is dealt out at a cent a glass. I once asked a police officer if there was much drunkenness there. “Oh, yes, sir,” he replied; “we can go in there any night and get a cart load of drunken men and women.”