Press enter after choosing selection

Tale Of Poverty And Suffering

Tale Of Poverty And Suffering image
Parent Issue
Day
20
Month
February
Year
1874
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Tho public aro now fully acquainted ; witli the condition and unusual numbers ' oi' tho poor, and they know, by slatistics givon in tho World, that during thomonth ; of February the height of suffering is ' roaohed, and they perceive that the ; er, which bas been reraarkably favorable, ' has beoomo very uiuch colder. It is scarcelv necessary to endeavor to enforce in tho "face of these fasts the necessity of ' immediate aid. Tho poor cannot wait. - ' The city charities ave cumbrous, There is a certain amount of routine proscribed, ' and tho groat number of applicants ] ders it all the more complicated. " ' lock's coal nover comes :" poor widows, ' with children shivering in rags in ■ less rooms, cry in despair. " Won't you ' go to him and beg him to send a visitor ? ' Ho said he would. And I can't have ' thing until I've been visited." In th I meanwhile what aro Mary Smith and Francés Beekwith to do ? Mary Smith's ' husband belonged to the Fire ! ment. Out one stormy night he took a : oold, whioh left him with rheumatisin. - ' He was sick in bed three months, and : Mary supported him, her mother, and ' threo children. It was a hard summer. i The baby died one Friday, the next : nesday her mother died, and the following Monday another child died. Throe : funerals in a few days, and Mary so poor. ' She could have better afforded that they lived, for doath is a great expense. The : husband grew better and resumed his ; place ; but it was too hard. The ; tism sottled about his heart ; ho had to ' resign, and, too poor to be sick at home, he went to tho hospital. One child was i sent to tho Island, and Mary was left ' with a baby ten months old, with nothïng to do, no money, and deeply in dobt. Sho has not lived, for every day she is dying. She supports her child, and literally exists upon a slender little frame that ever day is wasting and growing feebier. But Mary works and strugglos with a world that would have conquered her long ago, but that she has managed to find a little sawing, to get a dinner every day at St. Barnabas, and $1 a week from the Society for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Poor. The dollar goes to her landlord, for she is so honest ; the dinner is all she gets to eat. There would havo been no use for her to buy food, for she had no fire. When she gets any sewing she goes over to the Industrial School, where she can havo a machine, : needies, and thread for nothing. While she is gono she ties her ten months' old baby in a chaii that it may not get hurt, and wraps blankets about it that it may not freeze, and the baby alone in its helplessness sleeps and shivers, grows hungry and waits patiently, as poor babios learn to do, unlil Mary comes back to it. Is it strange that Mary grows tired waiting for Kellock's coal ' Some kind ladies sent her last Saturday a bushei of coal and some wood, and all day Sunday and since tho baby has had some fire. But a buBhel of coal will not last very long, andthis weatheris too cold for a ten months' old baby to sit in a cold room even though tied up and wrapped in blaukets; and Mary'a blankets are none too thick and warm , and you may imagine the baby never did havo an abundant layette. She tricd to get it a place in some kindergarten, but the baby was too young. If she only had a machine at home, some work, and some coal, Mary and the baby would be rich. Indeed, work is all she asks, though you would think to see her that sho needed most a soft bed, careful nursing, and plenty of rich, nourishing food, although she thinks that, with Dr. Mott's prescription and tho medicino the ladies have furnished her, she needs nothing more but coal and work. It does seem she ought to have these when one thinks of the lonely baby in the cold room. She lives at 154 Bleecker street, room 29. And thore is Francés Beekwith. She is an English woman sixty years old, who has been in this country a long time. - She is a parasol-maker, and learned her trade when parasols were made by hand. Then she could make $8 and $9 a week while the season lasted. But since machines have been used there has been little for hor to do. For twenty-one years she nover had to ask aid, and even laid up $200. But work became more and more scarce, the savings melted away, and for months sho has had nothing to do. She has tiied to learn to sew on the sewing-machine, but it was hard to learn tho motion of the treadle ! Now she can manage it pretty well if she only had work. But one must eat all tho same. - So she pawned almost all her clothes and her bed-clothos, until one morning her poor, pinched, blue look told its own tale, and by dint of close questioning the ladies of the Industrial School discovered how near to starvation and freezing sho had come. In her room thero has not been a fire this winter, and three times she has lost the use of her limbs through cold. Now Francés gets her dinner at St. Barnabas, and she, too, has had a bushei of coal sent her, and some wood. " Such a beautiful fire as I had Sunday, and how the cat did enjoy it." Por a great big, saucy cat is husband, children, and friends to Francés. Still the bushei of coal will soon bo exhausted, and Frances's room will bo colder than ever if something isn't done, and she will grow low-spirited, as she says she sometimos does, which always makes her foei worse. But even if she kept her spirits up, an old woman of sixty ought not to live in a room without fire during such wcather as we are now having. She lives at 169 Bleecker street. Then there is Mrs. Hay, with five little children, and Louise Nicholson, whose father is stone blind, and she cannot leave him even to work or hunt for work. And yesterday inorning Mrs. Fitzgerald walked from 70 New Chambers stroot up town, oarrying her baby and a basket, to get gomo cold food, and to beg that tho promised visitors froin the city bureau niight hurry and come, so that the fuel could be spnt, for the children were ao cold, and a week was a long time to wait. Work to buy coal and food ! - work to buy coal and food ! - is the appeal which the poor inake to-day as nover before. There is no time now to set in inotion any othor charitable organizations. ín publishing tho lists of ñames of thoso wanting work, the World has enabled those who are interested not only in doing something to reliove distress but in getting their own work dono cheaply and well to accomplish a great deal for themselves and others. In acqainting the public with charitable appliances alroady in motion the little that has been done has brought forth such tangible results that to relato them is but to show how the interests of the two classes of the corumunity - those who need work and thoso who want work done - aro one and the same when brought togbther. The mention of the Industrial and Training School at 625 Broadway has thrown work into the hands of numbers of destituto women. Mr. Siuimons, of 70 Murray street, sent up twenty dozen napkins to be hemmed at 2 1-2 cents apiece. Twenty dozen napkina was a gold mine. Thirty cents a dozon for hemming napkins on a machine given free, with needies and thread, to women making calicó wrappers for a largo up-town Btore for 18 cents apiece, was such a windfall as has not descended befóse for many a day. Somo wom,on made aotually $1.20 a day. Other women have found good places in families to sew. An acoomplished dressmaker is now with a wealthy family up-town, and other engagements awaiting her. To these women sewing in a private family is all they dosire, for this reason if for no other, they get a richer and a greater variety of food than they can possibly havo otherwise, and it is this, after this long, weary waiting for work, they most need. It is pleasaut to commend to the public ao sensible, practical, and thorough a charity as the Industrial School. In doing it so many ends are actfoinplished that the effort at a systematic relief of the poor would fail wcro it left undone. The only charity to tho poor, except in exceptional cases, is to enable them to help themselves. To enable poor women to help themselves is the only aim of the Industrial School. lts method in these days of sentimental and indiscriminate almsgiving is so refreshing that it deserves to be known. In a large toom on the second floor, at 625 Broadway, are placed sixty-fivo sewing-machines ; on these, women aro taught to sew. Three weeks are considered sufficient to learn. Girls canuot tako time to learn everything, but as soon as they can sew decently thoy are given work to do. This work is solicitcd trom shops, private families, and every possible source. When work cannot be found tho society, which is a cooipany of oharitable ladies, who devote both their timo and money to it, provide calicó to be made up for the missiou schools. When a dress is made it is taken to the mission and tho worker is paid for it. For a child's drcss, and every woman can make two of them in a day, she is paid flfty ets. apiece. Tho mission school gots tho clothes, tho woman receives the money, and tho Society provide the calicó. This is dono only where no othor work can bo found. As rapidly as a woman is prepared for family work and superior grades of sewing, she is recommended by the Society and a situation found for her. Not a year in oxistence the school bas taught 1,690 women and found places for 1,500. That is, they have onabled 1,500 women to help themselves. If oue reflects it will be seen what such an institution is doing for the city, who finds its burden of paupers one of itsgroat expenses, and remembers that for every person thus assisted the number is made ono loss. The efforts of this school are notconfined to teaching women to sow. Thore are free classes in phonography and book-keeping, and it is intended to establish a training school for all kinds of domestic work, to prepare skillful and economical cooks, to toaoh washing and ironing, and endeavor to raise up a generation of sorvants so prized that it will render that brauch oí labor one of the most honored, as it ought to be, of all kinds of woman 's work. To do this the school is to be removed to a building admirably adapted for its intentions on Tenth street, near Stewart's. - There it will have a freo reading-room, open at night, and supplied with wholesome literature for the benefit of woikinggirls. A soup-room and lodgings, which are not intended as refuges, but for women who find themselves as occasionally they do without work, money or homes. In thus explaining at length tho scope and intentions of the Industrial School, thero is but one object in view, to cali attention of the public to a place where the honest, industrious poor are to be found, who are trying to help themselves, aud who now find it very dimcult, and to assure it that work sent thero will be well done, under the oversight of the ladies iu ' oharge, and that they will take ploasure in supplying families with persons able to do all kinds of sewing, and also to enable the public in beconnng acquainted with this iustitution to encourage its continuance by liberal support, as all that it does acts and reacts only for good. In a letter in the Observer Dr. Prime fit ly suggests that the sewing societies which are attached to almost every church engagud in sewing for the poor would be doing still better if they would throw their work into tho hands of this Society, and permit the poor to do it. By helping them in this nianner the sting of merely receiving charity would be taken away. It is scarcely necessary to follow out the effects of this upou the character of the needy, to many of whom it bocoines too natural to receive. One church sewing society up-town has done this already. If the hundreds of sociotios would but follow its example there would be an immediato alleviation of a great deal of tho bare poverty now prevailing. Sewing societies havo their charrns, and to see them pass entirely away would be to lose a link from the past. But in view of the more practical good to be accomplished by their abandonment it might bo well to relinquish the sentiment which clusters about them.

Article

Subjects
Old News
Michigan Argus