One Way Out

IGRANT

a higher average than the graduates of most of the big preparatory schools. Certainly they had just as good instruction and if anything better discipline. There was more competition here and a real competition. Many of the pupils were foreign born and a

they are this is more of a disadvantage than an advantage. The fact that the boy's fellows were all of a kind was what had disturbed me even in the little suburban grammar school. For that matter I can

business men, our lawyers and doctors-if not our conservative bankers. For one graduate of such a school as my former surroundings had made me think essential for the boy, I could count now a dozen graduates of this very high school who were distinguishing themselves in the city. The boy was going to meet here the same spirit I was getting in touch with among

y fought but somehow they grew a bit weaker as they fought. Now," I said, "you and I are going to try to recover that lost ground. Let's think of ourselves as like our great-great-grandfathers. We've just come over here. So have about a million others. The fight is a differen

d," he said, with h

to think you're any better than they are. You aren't. But you're just as goo

fted his h

ugh we'd just landed wit

turies ago. They've been all this time paving the way for you and me. They've built roads and schools and factorie

to feel the impetus of the big history back of him and the big history yet to be made ahead of him. He had known nothing of that before. The word American had no meaning to him except when a regi

ntil he had proved that this was the place for him. Even then I wanted him to lead the cheering. I wanted him to test himself in the literary societies, the dramatic clubs, on the athletic field. In other words, instead of remaining passive I wanted h

r the winter. But when I came to look into the matter of getting coal down here I found I was facing a pretty serious problem. Coal had been a big item in the suburbs but the way people around me were buying it, made it a still bigger one. No cellar accommodations came with the tenement and so each one was forced to buy his coal by the basket or bag. A basket of anthracite was costing them at this time about forty cents. This was for about eighty pounds of coal, which made the total cost per ton eleven dollars-at least t

though I had told her some

ou mean?"

d to the

eleven dollars a

as all that caused my remark,

ill have to cost twenty dollars a ton. We'll live on pe

m a pity that the burden of such pric

they?" s

id, "the dealers seem to hav

they?" she

e we haven't any place to put it." S

fifth of a ton, Billy.

ll five any ch

could take care of five," she

as I thought of it I didn't see

f there were more women like you in the world

I'll see the other women in the house. They are th

d weighed into it eighty pounds of coal. With that for my guide I gathered the other men of the families about me and made them carry the coal in while I measured it out. The driver who at first was inclined to object to the whole proceeding was content to let things go on when he found himself relieved of all the carrying. We emptied the wagon in no time and the other men insisted upon carrying up my coal for me. I collected every cent of my money and incidentally established myself on a firm footing with every family in the house. Several other tenements later adopted the plan but the idea didn't take hold the way you'd have thought it would. I guess it

his wife's sister and two children. On the second floor there was Giuseppe, the young sculptor, and his father and mother. The father was an invalid and the lad supported the three. On the third floor lived a fruit peddler, his wife and hi

ntry districts of Italy where they live very rudely. Once here they make their new quarters little better than their old. The younger ones however who are going to school are doing better. But taken by and large it was difficult to persuade them that cleanliness offered any especial advantage

e night. She nearly drove the color out of my own cheeks for I thought surely that something had happened to the boy. But it wasn't that; she had heard that the baby on the first floor was ill and had gone down there to see if there was anything she might do f

ful. I'll never get that picture ou

he matter

poor litt

ttle thing?"

with its pinched white face staring up at

he matter

came in while I was there and told me,"-she shuddered-"that they'd been feed

how we had discussed for a week the wisdom of giv

"Michele must be very, very poor. The floor wasn't washe

r hands unable

sound bad

low a family in the same house wi

ok my

do. I guess we can squeeze out fift

fifty cents out of a ston

t the women took in garments to finish and picked up the matter of two or three dollars a week extra. There were five in the family but they were far from being in want. In fact Michele had a good bank account. They had all they wanted to eat, were warm and really prosperous. There was absolutely no need of the dirt. It was there because they didn't mind it. A five cent cake of

the temperate and able-bodied any worse examples of hard luck than I saw among my former associates. In fact of sheer abstract hard luck I didn't see as much. In seventy-five per cent of the cases the conditions were of their own making-either the man was a drunkard or the women slovenly or the whole family was just naturall

twelve to one. She was a shy, retiring little body who had sapped her strength in just bringing the children into the world and caring for them in the privacy of her home. She had neither the temperament nor the training to face the world. But she bucked up to it. She sold out of the house what things she could spare, secured cheap rooms on the outskirts of the neighborhood and announced that she would do sewing. What it cost her to come bac

. That's where you get your true "Song of the Shirt." She not only sewed her fingers to the bone but while doing it she suffered a very fine kind of torture wondering what would happen to the five if she broke down. Asylums and homes and hospitals don't imply any great disgrace to most of the tenement dwellers but to a woman of that type they mean Hell. God knows how she did it but she kept the five alive and clothed a

advantages you didn't see before but you're in a position to use them. You aren't shackled by conventions; you aren't cramped by caste. The world stands ready to help the under dog but before it will lift a finge

y. The youngster himself resented this interference but the parents took it in good part. Then in time she ventured further and suggested that the baby would be better off i

made a call on Ruth and discussed her cases with her until in the end she made of her a sort of first assistant. This was the beginning of a new field of activity for Ruth whi

me ver