The Leaven in a Great City Part 4

In a preceding chapter an attempt was made to show how hopeless the task of home-making was for women who had neither knowledge nor ideals to guide them. When it is remembered that the environment of these homes was in itself degrading, to maintain even the semblance of a home was a remarkable achievement.

These women knew but three educating influences--home, school and Church.

Four, perhaps, if one chooses to count the streets, where most of their time was spent, as one. The value of the first they revealed in the homes they made. The school at the time it was a factor in their development was a place that had no connection with anything else in their lives. What they learned there was but to the exceptional few without any practical value.

They learned to read to get promoted, or because they could not help it.

The arithmetic which they found valuable they learned in doing errands and spending their own pennies. They learned to form letters with their pens; but as they had no use for the knowledge, they soon forgot it. Their conception of education and that of their world left them perfectly at ease in their accomplishment. The Church had to do with their souls; and to the majority the care of their souls was a delegated responsibility, and gave them little concern, if any. Personal effort in that direction was a matter of old age.

The Church was, by its own traditions and sentiment, a spiritual light and guide; the end and aim of its service to develop spiritual life by teaching and prayer. The social life of the people, or, for that matter, the civic conditions that to the last degree regulated and controlled their pleasures, were not the concern of the Church. The parish house did not exist. The inst.i.tutional church had not been conceived even in thought.

Yet at this period, 1880 and 1881, there was a growing consciousness that something was wrong in the social order; that neither churches, schools nor homes were meeting the necessities of the working people or their children.

The Church found itself losing ground; the people could not be held in allegiance to it. This was so true of the Protestant churches downtown that already the wisdom of moving uptown was being questioned. Some had even then left their old buildings to be used as mission churches; others sold their downtown buildings, moving uptown, giving up any attempt at holding the ma.s.ses, who manifested no interest in the Church or its work. The missions then established were and are maintained with more or less wisdom and success. That mistakes should be made was natural. There was no precedent as to how one cla.s.s in this democratic community should work for another. It took years for the churches to learn that the secret of success was in working _with_, and not _for_, the people.

The overcrowding went on. Neighborhoods changed so rapidly that it was impossible to adopt any system to meet the necessities of the social conditions. These conditions were created by race standards of living, pleasure and religion. No man or organization was prepared to grapple with them intelligently, for they viewed them as observers.

The Church had still the first interpretation of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and those in prison. Secular work was not yet a part of the redemptive work of the Church. Poverty and ignorance reigned where prosperity and intelligence had been. The mission church became a distributing station. It was but natural that the men and women who followed Christ in their lives should feed and clothe the hungry and the naked. It was quite as natural that people whose struggle for life was constant, a struggle in which they were rarely successful, even when they accepted their own standards of success, should develop shrewdness in securing all possible aid at the least possible effort. The more they received without effort, the easier life was made for them. This was one method of adjustment. Where there were several children in a family they were often sent to as many Sunday-schools. The churches, all unconsciously, for a long period carried on the work of the missions on a commercial basis, competing energetically to secure attendants at mission services and Sunday-schools. The workers found their success measured by the numbers that appeared in their reports. It was the American standard of success. It became profitable to go to Sunday-school. The approach of the holidays found them crowded. The mission churches boomed. They provided an outlet for the energies of devoted, consecrated men and women, determined to make the world better because they were in it. The missions were an outlet for the generous; for the men and the women who considered themselves stewards of the properties in their possession. The blunders made are a tribute to the faith which established and maintained churches. The very blunders of those years were the seeds of wisdom these latter days are beginning to garner in the fruits of cooperation and federation. The forces are beginning to marshal under one banner and emblem, with one aim born of the nineteenth century conception, that Christ taught civic duty to His followers when He declared, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." That the Church is the guardian of the people's rights, as well as their example, is a long-delayed conception. It has taken thirty years to bring the evolution in Church work from compet.i.tion to cooperation in the work of personal and civic regeneration.

Many of the difficulties hardest to overcome have grown out of the mistakes of those years, when the rapid influx of foreigners changed the character of the people of the tenement regions, and the Church failed to change its methods. They came, many of them, paupers, a charge at once upon the charitable and the humane. Neither their ignorance nor poverty was a bar to their citizenship; their presence on the munic.i.p.al stage in the character of voters, sovereigns, increased the civic problems of New York, and naturally these the Church problems.

Unfortunately the charitable work of the churches was too often left to the management of sentimental people, who failed to see what has been forced upon workers of the present day: that hunger is sometimes a moral educator; that the salvation of a family may sometimes be best secured by letting them suffer, the innocent with the guilty, because in the suffering is an educating power impossible to secure in any other way.

One evening to a working-girls' club a teacher in a mission school not far away brought a girl of sixteen, introducing her as one of her girls who had been in her cla.s.s two years. Privately she told one of the directors of the club of the poverty of the girl's family. The father was a man of seventy-five, who could do only the lightest work, and found getting the work he could do very difficult. This girl was the eldest of seven children, all attending the mission. "It is a mystery what would become of the family, were it not for what the mission does for them," was the comment of the teacher. A close inspection of the girl did not reveal distressing poverty, and the directors of the club were puzzled. The girl was employed in a store at a very small salary. She was anxious to go to the country. Of course, she must be sent away without any cost to herself.

She doubted if the family could spare her wages, even if she could go free.

She explained that she and her brothers and sisters had gone in "Tribune Fresh-Air Parties," but she was now too old. "The trouble with our family is," she commented, "that we are all too old." It seemed a hopeless doctrine to become fixed in the mind of a girl of sixteen, so the club directors secured a vacation for her through the Working-Girls' Vacation Society, deciding that, if it were necessary, they would pay the mother her wages for the time the girl was away. No question arose as to her wages. At the expiration of her two weeks' vacation, when she should have been penniless, she appeared at the club in a new hat and gloves. When the girl joined the club her Sunday-school teacher paid one month's dues. She had been present at several business meetings; she had seen the other girls paying their dues, she had heard the treasurer's report, but she never attempted to a.s.sume her financial obligations. She was spoken to finally in regard to her dues, and responded calmly by saying she could not pay her dues; she had no money. Various suggestions were made as to the possibility of her paying part. At last, to relieve the club treasury, one of the directors said: "I will pay what you owe and one month in advance. You may pay me as you can." The girl never came to the club again. No effort was made to trace her, as she contributed nothing to the life of the club, and many girls kept their dues paid who dressed far more plainly; these very girls she had on more than one occasion treated discourteously.

Two years afterward one of the club officers was calling on a friend. "I am so glad you came in," she exclaimed. "One of your club girls is in trouble and is coming here with Miss ----, a mission worker in Dr. ----'s church, this morning. Now you can help solve her problem." To have a member of a working-girls' club go to an outsider for help is to have one of your own family appeal to strangers in time of need. The club worker kept still. She was covered with shame. She had failed to establish relations with one it was her sole purpose to help. Who the girl was she did not know, as her friend had forgotten the girl's name. The girl came. It was our old friend of sixteen. She was, as may be imagined, not pleased to see the director of the club. The history of that family is fairly indicative of how missions were conducted at that time. How many of them are conducted at the present with the same results? Originally this family was found by the workers of a mission established by a wealthy church, and apparently in need. Rent was paid; food and clothes provided; doctors sent when necessary. The return for this, as tacitly agreed, was the presence of the children, as rapidly as they were old enough, in the Sunday-school, and the father and mother at the Sunday evening service, the only service this mission maintained.

The timidity of the first contact disappeared early. The wants soon outgrew the needs of the family. The mission people failed to respond to the wants, and watched more closely what it cost the church to meet the needs after the first years of acquaintance. This was not to be borne. The family went in a body to another mission of the same church ten blocks away. They made not the slightest effort to deceive, for they did not change their address.

Here were nine persons to add to the roll of the mission, and they were added. The family was enthusiastically welcomed. No impudent or intrusive questions were asked. Shoes, coats, rent money in whole or part was generously given. At the end of two years discoveries were made that led the mission workers to question what was done with the supplies provided.

The family would not stand this. They went bodily to a church less than a mile away, still living at the old address. The family was again taken up without question. That the father could not work was accepted and generosity was increased. The other missions contrasted unfavorably in generous impulses; the girl urged her former cla.s.smates to join the last mission. The church meanwhile was walking by faith in its treatment of the poor; aiming to live up to the conception of its days; strengthening the influence of its prayers with gifts of potatoes; certainly a great advance on prayers and no potatoes.

At about this time a young girl was met in a Sunday-school cla.s.s very attractive, always well and prettily dressed. She had been in the Sunday-school all her life, and had joined the church with her mother, a gentle, quiet woman, who leaned on her daughter for guidance. The daughter was a tower of strength. By accident it was learned that the girl was a wage-earner, working with her mother in a large suit house in New York; that they kept house, doing the housework, even the washing and ironing, before and after their day's work. Added to this they made all their own clothes, which must have involved a vast amount of labor, as they both dressed well.

The position of this mother and daughter is fairly typical of a large army of women workers, and explains, in part, at least, why two women of so much character should have accepted charity for so many years and why they could not change their economic relation. The work they did was to a degree a trade. Each was a special "hand" on a certain part of women's suits. They were paid by the piece. When they had work, they made good wages; but the seasons were short. The beginning of every season found them in debt. By the time the debt was paid work had grown slack or stopped. It was simply impossible to get beyond this, try as they would. When the girl broke down, she explained it by saying, "I worked all night to finish my dress. If I could buy the material in the slack season I could make our things then. We never have the money, and they have to be made just when work is hardest at the store." She was but nineteen. The girl was pretty, ambitious, entirely above the men of her own station in refinement, and yet quite as far beneath the brothers of the girls she met in her Sunday-school cla.s.s. She lived in mental terror lest they should attempt to call on her. It was pitiful to see the struggle she made to conceal the fact that she was poor.

The other girls knew she worked, knew the church helped the family, but were very tactful in a.s.sisting her in keeping her secret.

When the mother came to the notice of the officers of the church she was a widow with three young children, one a baby. She could support her family if the rent was paid. The church officers were glad to do this. They did not support a mission and had very little outlet for the church's generosity, except the mission societies--Home and Foreign--to which they were devoted as a church.

For thirteen years the church had been faithful to its promise and paid the rent. n.o.body questioned the mother as to how her children were getting on, or what was being done to make them self-supporting. The younger were two boys. When they were large enough to play on the street, the mother put them in an inst.i.tution and paid a small sum for them. The girl went to work with the mother as soon as she could. The elder boy came home at fourteen and became a wage-earner. He was troublesome, most difficult to manage, was out of work more time than he was employed, and yet he would not when unemployed even keep the fire, that the house might be comfortable when his mother and sister came home. They always left the house in order when they went to work, but found it littered when they returned. The boy had no sense of moral responsibility for his own support. His temper was wholly untrained. At the time the family history was connected, the youngest boy was to come home, and naturally his return was dreaded. The mother and daughter met the problem unaided as to advice or suggestion. Apparently the church would continue to pay the rent without question, though there were three, and would soon be four, wage-earners in the family.

When these facts were discovered, the church committee was asked to advance money enough to pay for the girl's lessons at a school where dress-cutting was taught, and to notify the widow that her rent would no longer be paid.

The girl accepted the offer at once. She proved a great success, and to-day is earning a salary as a designer equal to that of many college professors.

She educated her younger brother in a profession, and has entirely forgotten the days when the church helped her. Her social affiliations are in another part of the city, and she bows, or forgets to bow, when she meets those who may remember it, as they would, to her credit. Had the church retained its claim on her through its financial aid, she would not be where she is to-day. Her development came when the church made another future possible to her by refusing to pauperize the family.

We all know the families who have more turkeys at Christmas than members.

We still have churches and sewing schools in the same neighborhood, giving their Christmas entertainments at different hours and at different dates, to suit the convenience of those who attend both and profit thereby. We even have different entertainments given for different branches of work in the same church at different hours. We succeeded in impressing one boy with the idea that what he received at the various organizations maintained for his profit was "Christmas loot," and that he was clever at getting more than his share. We have become accustomed to conducting an exchange after our Christmas entertainments, because in giving we have, unfortunately, duplicated the gifts received elsewhere. Mollie finds herself with two dolls and no bed, and Katie has two beds and no doll, and Alice has two sets of dishes and no table. Like fate has attended the gifts to the boys.

We, as a result, enact the role of patient, sweet generosity and redistribute gifts.

We know that comparisons are made as to which church, sewing school or club is the one to give the major portion of the coming year's attendance. But all this will disappear as rapidly as sectarianism and compet.i.tion between churches and in philanthropic effort disappear. Compet.i.tion created it; cooperation will dispel it, because all will come to a higher conception of the relations of efforts toward improvement. Then the "profit" of church and Sunday-school attendance will not be measured by the "things"

distributed.

Nothing marks the growth of public intelligence more than the federations, and the systems that have grown out of the knowledge of the injury done the poor by misplaced generosity. Sometimes the children of the poor seem uncanny in the knowledge they possess of how to use the public and private charities.

A girl of seventeen gave astonishing evidence of this in a family crisis.

She was a member of a working-girls' club; quiet, studious, reserved. She was always one of the poorest dressed girls in the club. Her devotion to those cla.s.ses which she joined and attended regularly attracted the attention and admiration of the club directors. Discovering that her dress was in part responsible for the treatment accorded her by two or three members, it was decided to make it possible for her to make a better appearance. She had shown qualities which, if allowed free play, would make her an influential member of the club.

It was discovered that she attended a near-by mission of a Congregational church. Consultation with the mission workers brought the unwelcome knowledge that the mother was immoral, hopelessly immoral, but that her children loved her dearly and that she was devoted to them. The paying of rent seemed to support a shelter that ought not to exist, but no one had the courage to attempt to separate the mother and children. Even this girl of seventeen had no idea of her mother's wrong-doing. It was a case that needed the wisdom of Solomon to solve. Just before Christmas the mother fell ill. The pa.s.sion of grief that convulsed that group of children was convincing testimony of the mother's tenderness and devotion. Her eyes followed them constantly. When able to speak, she would whisper: "What will become of them? There is no one to care for them." She was removed to a hospital, with the knowledge that the rent had been paid for a month and that the children would be looked after. She died two days later. When the house was visited that morning, the elder girl was out "getting things,"

the children said. When she came in, she was told that provision had been made to send them all together to a home, where they would not be separated for a month. The girl sprang to her feet, grabbed the fifteen-months-old baby from the floor, and swept the others in a circle about her. She panted, rather than said: "You shall not take the baby away! I will not let them go! n.o.body shall take them. They are mine. I can take care of them.

You just pay the rent. I can do everything else. See?" She put the baby down, and thrusting her hands into her pockets, brought out tickets to the Diet Kitchen, the Charities Department for coal and groceries. She had been to two missionaries connected with different churches she knew, and secured orders on a near-by grocery for dry groceries. There was not a public or private charity that gave out-door a.s.sistance that that girl of seventeen did not know just what must be done to get their help. The amount of knowledge of this kind that she possessed was astounding.

Besides, there was not an inst.i.tution in the city where children were taken for longer or shorter periods of time that she did not know. In many of them she had been herself. In others she had visited the other children of the family when they were inmates. She found out the defects of each one--the kind of matron, of food, of punishments that governed in each, and made out a case against each one. White, with blazing eyes, she looked capable of doing just what she said she would do, take care of the family of five little children. They were grouped about her, clinging to her, all crying in the face of the awful calamity that was about to befall them--separation. It was agreed that they should stay where they were for the balance of the month. The question of the future beyond that would be discussed later. The girl quieted down.

The mother had been insured in one of the insurance companies on the weekly payment plan. The girl had secured an undertaker who would go to the hospital and take the mother's body to his establishment for the funeral to be held the next morning.

"We will have our own minister," she said, with dignity, "not the mission."

Her visitors were again astounded. The mission had looked after the family for years. The girl had for several years been connected with the Sunday-school. The address of the minister was secured. The girl explained: "My mother was confirmed in that church, in her own country, her own home.

She had a letter to the church when she came to this country with my father after they were married. At first my father earned good money, but he got sick and they did not get along, and my mother stopped going there, except to communion; and for three years now she ain't had the clothes to go even then. She had us confirmed there as soon as we were old enough, and we went there to communion when we had the clothes. The minister is going to come to the funeral, and I am going to send word to some of mother's friends from the old country who go there to church. I could not have them come here; mother would feel awful." Glancing about the barren, dirty rooms with a look of scorn, she continued: "We could not let our church friends know how poor we are. Mother tried hard enough. She was away from home days at a time looking for work. She took boarders. She did everything she could. You know I've worked when I could get it." Her voice broke for the first time.

"She took boarders and gave them the beds; we all slept on the floor. She married the last boarder, the baby's father. She told me to stay here until he came home, this month--he's a sailor--and to do just what he says. He was always kind to me and gave me things. You've paid the rent, and you need not do anything more. I'll stay right here and keep the children till the baby's father comes home; you need not trouble any more."

She was quiet a moment, but evidently felt the doubt and the decision in her visitors' minds. Rising, she said fiercely: "I'll not; I'll never let these children be taken from me!"

The problem was too much for her visitors. They decided to leave the question of the immediate future to the family's own minister, who certainly had not carried these lambs in his arms, nor watched very closely over their erring mother.

The family was separated. Nothing else was possible. The baby's father repudiated any responsibility for any of the children, and disappeared. The girl drooped for a time after the separation; but she finally secured a good home, making a capable, devoted servant until she married. She owes allegiance only to her own church, saying: "The minister talked so beautifully at mother's funeral." Her whole conception of the mission church is that it is an inst.i.tution for helping the poor.

She never doubted her mother, whose picture, enlarged from a small photograph, is the chief ornament in her parlor, her most cherished possession, outside of her husband and children.

In spite of the outburst of pa.s.sionate devotion at the time of her mother's funeral, this woman, now with a comfortable home of her own, knows nothing of the children for whose protection she attained, for a time at least, sublime heroism. In a few months her indifference was as astonishing as her devotion had been. Her own life and its concerns filled her mental horizon to their entire exclusion. For her own home and children she has the pa.s.sionate love that she gave to her mother and the crowd of half-brothers and sisters. She is ambitious for her children, and has two in the High School. This woman is a fair ill.u.s.tration of the evolution that is making this nation great.

The churches, when first the social disintegration began, had neither the intelligence born of experience nor the money to place the mission work in charge of people of high intellectual and social development. There were no training schools for Christian workers, and to that degree the Church was hampered in inaugurating its work among the poor. The selection was too often a question of pleasing some wealthy member of the church, by giving positions to proteges who had absolutely no qualification for the work but their necessities. This basis of selection--not yet wholly eliminated--put the work of the missions under the control of men and women who lacked social training. Neither by nature nor grace were they fitted for the work they attempted to do.

Their att.i.tude of mind was too often that of patron, which, as any one of experience knows, is one of the most demoralizing influences active among the poor.

There comes to mind now a downtown church, the mission of one of the leading uptown churches. It was Thanksgiving evening. For weeks placards had been on the front of the building announcing an entertainment for that evening, to which all the people were invited. On the platform were a number of young men and women, sons and daughters of the uptown church members, the entertainers for the evening.

The church was packed with the people of the region, self-respecting poor.

The mission, fortunately for them, was limited in money, so its possibility for pauperizing was limited to just that degree. The mission pastor, before the entertainment began, opened with a prayer, in which he thanked G.o.d for the warm-hearted, generous people who were giving themselves and their money for the uplifting of the poor and degraded. G.o.d was asked to implant a feeling of grat.i.tude in the hearts of those a.s.sembled to enjoy this pure entertainment provided for their benefit. When he opened his eyes he continued his theme in two variations for twenty minutes longer, in what he called an address. It was this att.i.tude of mind on the part of many of the workers that drove out of the church the ma.s.s of the poor; that began the breach that has widened, until in September, 1901, we stand appalled as we realize all that has entered into the making of that awful national tragedy.

The standards of cleanliness and beauty maintained in the mission churches have been far from what they should be. As the visitor enters to-day one of the first buildings erected on the East Side as a mission church, he is repelled by the general air of neglect; the dirt on walls and ceiling, made still more repellent by water stains from leaks; the ugliness of the whole interior, as well as the entire lack of adaptation to the work of to-day, which one of the most devoted of pastors, a friend to every man, woman and child in the region, is establishing. There is not one thing in that building that is not ugly and cheap. The very platform on which the pastor preaches lacks furniture, that would impart an air of cheer or impressiveness. Instead of the building being an unconscious influence in the neighborhood for beauty, tidiness, cleanliness, it is a part of the general result of the greed and poverty which has made one of the most sordid, character-destroying neighborhoods in New York.

One Sunday afternoon, as the writer was pa.s.sing this building, the children began pouring out of it. The Sunday-school had just closed. They yelled, fought, ran. Suddenly they discovered a half-drunken wretch of a woman reeling down the street. The elder boys pulled her clothes, dragged off her hat, tormented her, yelling and laughing at the foul language they called forth. It was appalling, yet not surprising. The building remains as first erected. No attempt has been made to adapt it to the needs of the region.

It was built for church and Sunday-school services, and the work which the devoted, consecrated pastor has put into it to meet the needs of the time is done under conditions that make the highest success impossible. There is not a room in the neighborhood for boys' clubs, for reading-room, for pleasure, where boy nature can have the fullest expression under wise direction. For adults the saloon and the streets are the only resources outside of their overcrowded homes. The pastor knows that to succeed in changing the character of that neighborhood it is necessary to hold the people through seven days of the week. He knows that this can be done if he can provide for the people pleasures, opportunities that express their social development. He knows that people express themselves in their pleasures, and that, whether they will or not, that expression is controlled by environment. If the trustees will not, cannot be made to see this, let the pastor of the mission be what he will, his work will be limited by the men who, in the very nature of their relations to the mission, cannot see the truth.

The pastor of the mission had a long vacation given him. The man sent to take his place wore soiled linen, would sit for an hour at a time tipped on the back legs of his chair. He would refer to the people in their presence as "they" and "these people." One of the young men who belonged to a club where some attention had been paid to manners and dress said one night: "Say, wouldn't you think that feller would wear clean collars, and stand up when talking to a lady? I don't care if he is a minister, he ain't much."

The people who were responsible for putting that man in that position were generous, held the best social positions, filled responsible positions in the commercial world. Not one of them would have chosen that man to represent them in the business world, because of his carelessness in dress and lack of manners. But they did not hesitate to send him to represent the Lord Jesus Christ to the poor; not a demoralized and degraded people, but a self-respecting body of Americans, born and trained, so far as they had been trained, to believe in the equality of man under the flag and before G.o.d. Is it any wonder that the more intelligent of the people resented the placing of this man over them, and remained away from the church of which he had charge? His person, his mind or his manners were not contradictory.

One evening, going through the audience room of this building on an errand to the rear room, the visitor heard one of the women missionaries say to a little girl who had evidently been troublesome and inattentive: "If you don't sit still, Mollie, I'll come there and shake you until you'll be glad to sit still." The woman was training a group of little girls to take part in a Christmas entertainment. They were each to recite a verse and turn a gold paper-covered letter as they recited, so that when the last one had spoken her verse the sentence "Glory to G.o.d in the highest, peace on earth and good-will to men" would be revealed. The woman, in temper, language, conception of her duty to these children, differed in nowise from their ignorant, tired, worried mothers at home, who probably made no claim as a teacher of morals and religion. What ideals of womanhood did this woman represent?