White Slaves; or, the Oppression of the Worthy Poor Part 10

"The food was very poor and unsatisfactory; and when she complained that the porridge was sour, the matron told her if she did not like it she could leave it.

"Worse than all, her baby fell ill on a Wednesday; she could obtain no medicine for it until Sunday (though she asked for it repeatedly), and on Monday the baby died.

"The mother left the inst.i.tution the next day. She speaks in the highest terms of the physician in charge and of the a.s.sistant, Miss McDonald, at Rainsford Island; but she says the matron never did anything for her and was not with her when the baby died; also, that the milk and other food ordered for the patients is often not received by them. And in this respect her statement is corroborated by the remarks of another woman, also my tenant, who was an inmate of Long Island when it was first opened for women several years ago. This woman told me, with bated breath, that the food was miserable--it was killing her; and, indeed, she died soon after, though I think grief hastened her end."

[Ill.u.s.tration: GETTING A BREATH OF FRESH AIR.]

"It is because I have seen these people in their own homes that I feel such sympathy for them as paupers. They have known the comfort and independence of their own surroundings, and if by reason of old age or sickness--through no fault of their own--they become paupers, they should at least be treated with clue consideration and nursed with all tenderness. I am entering no plea for the lazy and idle and intemperate cla.s.s who seek the refuge of an almshouse, and for whom, as Dr. Banks says, the work-house is the proper place; but I do say that old or sick people, even if paupers, are ent.i.tled to the very best care. We do not begrudge it to them in our City Hospital or our State almshouse; therefore, why is it too much to require it of the city of Boston's pauper hospitals?

"No wonder that an attack such as has been made by Dr. Banks meets with violent opposition and denial. He is attacking inst.i.tutions whose officials depend for their bread and b.u.t.ter on the positions which they fill. But Dr. Banks and I have no 'axe to grind,' and he is only stating the truth when he says that the pauper inst.i.tutions at Rainsford Island are overcrowded (so overcrowded that nearly fifty old women sleep in a close and stifling attic, under the roof), and that the fare, especially for the old and sick, is not what it should be."

The _Boston Herald_ of August 30 begins an exhaustive article, more than five columns long, by saying:--

"For some time there has been an earnest and vigorous agitation going on regarding the management and condition of Boston's pauper inst.i.tutions at Long and Rainsford Islands. Heretofore this agitation has been out of the sight of the general public, with the exception of a few letters which have appeared from time to time in the papers; consequently, the sermon of Rev. Louis Albert Banks last Sunday on the subject came like a revelation to many.

"The _Herald_ had been making a thorough investigation of the charges brought, previous to Mr. Banks' utterances, and this has been continued up to the present time, in order that the people of Boston may know accurately and to the fullest the precise condition of its pauper inst.i.tutions and their inmates. As a result of that investigation, it may be boldly said that the criticisms which have been made public do not give an adequate idea of the disgraceful condition in which the inst.i.tutions are at present, nor the treatment which the paupers receive and under which they exist rather than live.

"This statement is a strong one, but it can be borne out by facts which are indisputable."

In the course of this long article, which fully sustains all statements set forth in my discourse, the _Herald_ reporter, commenting on the crowded condition of the buildings on Rainsford Island, says:--

"It is in the main building at Rainsford that the greatest lack of even decent surroundings prevails, and where the condition of the inmates is the worst. Here the fault seems to lie not only with the commissioners, but with the matrons in charge, for there is no system discernible in the housekeeping arrangements whatever. The infirmary is occupied by those women who are not able to get about; and the rooms composing that part of the building are pleasant and airy of themselves, but they are spoiled by their keeping. There is no cla.s.sification of inmates, and old and young are all together, as well as the vicious and the unfortunate.

"Another cla.s.sification which might be made was suggested by the presence of two women who were so unfortunate as to be afflicted in such a manner that the whole air of the room was contaminated on their account. This was through no fault of their own, and they should not be made to suffer for it; but it seems hardly fair that all the other women should be compelled to breathe the air made foul by their presence. Add to this detriment to health and decent living the bad sanitary arrangements, and the result is, indeed, open to criticism.

"This building is so old and antiquated that it originally had no place provided inside for water-closets and bath-rooms. In putting these in they were built directly in the corners of the rooms; and these corners were then part.i.tioned off, but for some unknown reason the part.i.tions were not continued up to the ceilings, the result being that the closets were practically left in the room and a screen put around.

Owing to the fact that there is no water on the island, it all being brought in tanks by steamer, there is not that abundance used in flus.h.i.+ng out the bowls which otherwise might be the case, and which would go so far toward removing the horrible odor which is so prevalent in every part of the building. Aside from the discomfort in being obliged to smell this odor continually, the danger to the health of the inmates is a serious thing.

"Throughout the wards in this building there is considerable overcrowding, although not to the extent that is to be seen in another part. The beds are all cared for by the women themselves, and conversation with the matron showed that there was a regular time for changing the bed linen, although that time was not the same in any two rooms, and the writer, after continued questioning and asking for explanation, failed to discover that there was any regularity whatever about it.

"A few beds were taken at random and stripped to see their condition.

Invariably the sheets were dirty, very dirty; but this was explained by one of the inmates who was in charge of this ward by the statement that it was time they were changed, according to their usual practice, but for some reason, not given, it had not been done this week. On nearly all the sheets were plainly seen the marks of dead bed-bugs and other vermin, some of it dried on and looking as though it had been there for a long time."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ATTIC AT RAINSFORD ISLAND.]

[Footnote: Cut shows one wing. Another crosses it at right angles and is partly occupied. Thirty women occupy this room, allowing about 320 cubic feet of air-s.p.a.ce per person. The only ventilation is through windows jutting out on the roof, each one being 2 feet 10 inches by 4 feet 8 inches in size.]

"It is in the attic of the main building, however, that one should go to realize some of d.i.c.kens' pictures of pauper life, for there is a picture here that needs no exaggeration to make it appear on a par with those in fiction. In this attic live the older women, and they pa.s.s their sleeping hours and many of their waking ones under the eaves of this old house.

"Throughout this attic the peak is so low that it can be touched by the hand of a man of ordinary height while standing, and the roof pitches until it comes to within two feet of the floor. Under the caves here are placed the beds of these old women, their heads close under the roof, and extending in a line down the length of the building.

"The width of this attic is eighteen feet, and its length is that of the building; but it is divided up into several apartments. In one of these apartments were thirty beds, all occupied at night. The total air-s.p.a.ce of this room allowed about three hundred and twenty cubic feet to each person, where a thousand are considered necessary with good ventilation, according to Mr. Commissioner Newell. The only light and ventilation that this attic gets is through a few small windows let into the roof, not large enough to furnish ventilation for rooms which are not overcrowded, and certainly not large enough to purify rooms where the air is made foul by being breathed by at least three times too many persons.

"Moreover, these old women are required to rise every morning at 5:00 o'clock, and are compelled to remain up until 8 o'clock in the evening.

They are not allowed to lie down during the day without a special permit from the doctor, as, they say, it would cause disorder. This permit lie says he is always willing to grant, but they seldom come for it. This seems perfectly natural, as one hardly can expect that the old women would take pains to hunt up the doctor every time they wanted to take a short nap.

"Not only are they not allowed to lie down for a nap without this special permit, but comfortable chairs are not furnished them. By each bed is a single ordinary wooden chair of the cheapest kind, and this is allotted to the one occupying the bed. Now and then a rocking-chair may be seen, but they are few and far between."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARINERS' HOME.]

"Some time ago a benevolent and kind-hearted lady visiting the island was struck with this lack of comfort, and sent to the inst.i.tution a number of rocking-chairs for use in the old women's ward. They arrived on July 16, but an active search for them failed to disclose their whereabouts. It was plain that the women for whom they were intended were not getting the benefit of them, and inquiry was made. n.o.body seemed to know where they were. Several believed that something of the kind had been sent down, but knew nothing more. Finally, after an energetic search by Dr. Harkins, the chairs were discovered in a store-house, or paint-shop, where they had been put when they lauded on the wharf so long ago. Two days later these chairs had been taken out and placed in the wards, and there were two hundred women eager for the six comfortable rockers.

"Another criticism which might be made is that the paupers are provided with no regular religious service. At Deer Island there is a paid chaplain, and although his duties do not call him to the almshouse, he sometimes goes over. There is a large room called the chapel, and here religious services are held when there is any one to lead them. A Catholic priest goes down twice a week to minister to the wants of the Catholics, who are in the majority; something like ninety-five per cent being of that persuasion. The fact remains, however, that the city of Boston does not give its paupers the benefit of any religious service or guidance. As was said by one lady on hearing the facts: 'In the eyes of the city it is a greater crime to be a pauper than a criminal.'"

Rev. Dr. Frederick B. Allen, of the Episcopal City Mission of Boston, writing in the Herald of August 31, says:--

"In the management of human beings, especially the aged, the infirm, the insane, and the sick, there is needed a wise and tender consideration which sheer business management is apt to miss.

"The sociological problems of pauperism and crime, the study of successful methods in other cities and other lands, the deep sense of the sacredness of our humanity, even in its weakest and most unfortunate members,--these make their demand for the aid of men and women to whom these questions of human life and death are at least as controlling as the reduction of the city tax rate.

"Were there any such board of advisers to do in our city inst.i.tutions what the State Charities Aid Society has done for New York State, we should not have been confronted, as we now are, with poorly planned, inadequate, and badly managed buildings, lack of discrimination in those permitted to occupy them, insufficient and untrained nurses for the sick, lack of proper ventilation and food, and everywhere the absence of devoted personal, human, moral oversight and control.

"I second most positively Dr. Banks' a.s.sertion that 'an advisory board of leading citizens, on which are three or four level-headed and humane women, would work the revolution that is needed in the treatment of"

our brothers and sisters, the Boston paupers."'"

XII.

THE GOLD G.o.d OF MODERN SOCIETY.

"When wealth no mere shall rest in mounded heaps.

But smit with freer light shall slowly melt In many streams to fatten lower lands, And light shall spread, and man be liker man Thro' all the seasons of the golden year."

No one who is in touch with the throbbing life of this time can fail to perceive that this is an age peculiarly given up to the wors.h.i.+p of Mammon. The literature of our day bears certain evidence of this fact.

_Scribner's Magazine_ of last year contained, under the t.i.tle of "Jerry," a painfully realistic and comprehensive story, dealing with the debauch of a n.o.ble character by the fascination of gold. Jerry belonged to the "poor white trash" of the c.u.mberland Mountains, and on the death of his mother, being cruelly treated at home, he ran away to the West. After many wanderings, the little wayfarer, tired out and almost dead, fell into the hands of a quaint old miner who was digging and h.o.a.rding up gold in his cabin in the Northwestern Mountains. In the midst of this wild region, educated by a kind-hearted physician, Jerry grew up to be a young man of peculiarly n.o.ble and heroic character. He remembered with painful distinctness that he belonged to the poorest of the common people, and the ambition of his life was to uplift his own cla.s.s.

The fearful tragedy of the story begins when the miserly old miner--who, all the time unknown to Jerry, is h.o.a.rding up gold for his young ward--discovers, to his great astonishment, that gold has no fascination for this strange young man, and fears that with his lofty ideals all his toil for him will be in vain and unappreciated. So the shrewd old man plans to send him to the East, where his eyes may be dazzled with the brilliancy of fas.h.i.+onable life, and where may be revealed to him the power gold gives to its possessor. Sitting in his old log cabin on the mountain side, the old miner would rub his hands back on his stubbly gray hair and reason with himself: "If Jerry only knew gold; if Jerry could only see what gold could get, could only spend gold; then he would be willing to take all he could get and never ask where it came from." So the old miner determined that "Jerry must learn to spend money, must learn to love it, and then all will go well." And then the story goes on to tell of the deterioration of this n.o.ble young soul--how that gradually he becomes dominated with the pa.s.sion for gold, until he is not only willing to work for it, but murder for it, if only he may have gold and the power that it brings.

In another field Mr. Charles Dudley Warner gives us the same warning, in his story of "A Little Journey in the World." In this Mr. Warner tells us of one of the sweetest and purest of young women, who has the highest ideals, and whose standards of morality are of the n.o.blest, who is married to an unprincipled young speculator on Wall Street, New York; and under the influence of her husband, and the society into which she is drawn by his business relations, in which he gathers millions of money, all her holy and lofty ideals are overthrown, and she becomes simply a material, worldly woman. This is the way he reasons about it: "But we, I say, who loved her, and knew so well the n.o.ble possibilities of her royal nature, under circ.u.mstances favorable to its development, felt more and more her departure from her own ideals. Her life in its spreading prosperity seemed more and more shallow. I do not say she was heartless; I do not say she was uncharitable; I do not say that in all the externals of worldly and religious observance she was wanting; I do not say that the more she was a.s.similated to the serenely worldly nature of her husband, she did not love him, or that she was unlovely in the worldliness that ingulfed her and bore her onward. I do not know that there is anything singular in her history. But the pain of it to us was in the certainty--and it seemed so near--that in the decay of her higher life, in the hardening process of a material existence, in the transfer of all her interest to the trivial and sensuous gratifications--time, mind, heart, ambition, all fixed on them--we should never regain our Margaret. What I saw in a vision of her future was a _dead soul_--a beautiful woman in all the success of envied prosperity, with a dead soul."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHILDREN PLAYING IN COPP'S HILL BURYING GROUND.]

If we turn away from these revelations of the worm at the heart of our social life, that are made fascinating by the art in which they are clothed, to the rude happenings of every-day observation, the same danger is everywhere apparent. The a.s.sociated press despatches from San Jose, Cal., a few weeks since, bore this burden: "One of the best-known men in California died yesterday in a squalid hut on Colfax Street. He was Prof. Herman Kottinger, who at one time was the leading violinist on the Pacific Coast, and well known as a writer of prose and poetry, of 'A World's History,' and also of text-books on free thought. He was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, acquired by a lifetime of miserly frugality. At the time of his death sixteen hundred dollars in gold coin was found secreted in his bed. But one child, William Kottinger, a farmer, was present at the death. When the old man in his death-throes raised himself up in bed, the son rushed to his side. His father, mistaking the act, with a frenzied yell waved him back, and clutching at the bedclothes, pulled them back, disclosing to view the gold. He made a grab at it with both hands, and with the bright pieces in his fingers fell back with a gasp and expired.

"Prof. Kottinger was once a doctor in Heidelberg University, and was ninety years old. He was so wasted by hunger that his body weighed less than forty pounds, and was in a disgusting condition. His bed and clothes were reeking with filth. Over the head of the bed hung a violin of great value. So miserly was the old professor that fifteen years ago he drove his wife and all his children from home, saying that it cost too much to feed and clothe them. From that day until yesterday, when the end was approaching, not one of his relatives had come near him.

Two big fierce Danish mastiffs, half starved, have for years been the old man's only companions, and they guarded the shanty so well that not even a tax-collector could approach. They had to be killed yesterday before the undertaker could get into the house. When it was learned that Kottinger was dead, a number of his relatives hastened to his hut.

There has been a shameful neglect of the dead shown, and indecent haste in ransacking the place in search of the gold and other treasures known to be hidden."

All these show the destructive power of gold upon its wors.h.i.+ppers. But these are by no means the only victims of this wors.h.i.+p of the gold G.o.d.

For every one who is h.o.a.rding up his millions, and who is dominated by the love of gold for its very s.h.i.+ne and glitter, there are hundreds and thousands who are toiling for insufficient wages, and are suffering in poverty and want, that this lordly wors.h.i.+pper may pay his devotions to the money G.o.d.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DIGGING IN THE ASH-BARRELS IN WINTER.]

If some of these money kings who have made their millions by the oppression of the poor, in mines, and mills, and factories, were suddenly called to face the bones of the dead who have gone to their graves from weary, unrequited slavery, in order for their financial triumph, they would stand back aghast at the price of their own success.